Muslim World Reacts Positively to Obama's Outreach, And Expectations Have Been Raised

January 30, 2009

Author: Warren P. Strobel

Source: The Miami Herald/McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/880950.html

In 10 days, President Barack Obama has transformed the U.S. dialogue with the Muslim world.

His tools have been carefully chosen words of reconciliation, the decision to close Guantanamo Bay prison and the early dispatch of a Middle East peace envoy.

"The reaction has been phenomenal. People thought the president was sincere, authentic," said veteran Arab journalist Hisham Melhem, who interviewed Obama last week in Washington on Al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite TV network.

It was Obama's first television interview as president, a long-planned gesture that he used to tell the world's more than 1.5 billion Muslims that "Americans are not your enemy" and that he planned to address them with "a language of respect."

Former President George W. Bush often said much the same thing, but coming from Obama, the words seemed to carry a different meaning. The president clinched the deal, Melhem said, by reminding his audience that some of his family members are Muslims.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went further. "There's a great exhalation of breath going on around the world as people express their appreciation for the new direction that's being set," she said, citing her phone calls with world leaders.

So far, so good.

Obama's words and actions have raised expectations, in Washington and the Middle East, of major changes in U.S. policies that have been unpopular in the Arab world. U.S. officials acknowledge that those changes are likely to be slow and painful, if they come at all.