http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UncWt4VKZQo&feature=player_embeddedhttp://
Obama's Ramadan Hallmark Moment ...
President Obama continued his charm offensive on the Islamic world today, posting on the White House blog a video wishing Muslims a happy Ramadan, the month of fasting, prayer and charity observed by Muslims worldwide.
"On behalf of the American people -- including Muslim communities in all fifty states -- I want to extend best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem." Obama said. "These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam's role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings."
This isn't the first time Obama has sent special holiday messages -- in April, for example, there was a two-fer video post on the White House blog recognizing Passover and Easter.
But this message was part of a larger push, a point made clear in the introduction to the Ramadan video by Rashad Hussein, a deputy associate counsel in the White House who was the first Muslim in Obama's administration.
"This month is also a time of renewal and this marks the first Ramadan since the President outlined his vision for a new beginning between America and the Muslim world," Hussein wrote. "The President's message is part of an on-going dialogue with Muslim communities that began on inauguration day and has continued with his statement on Nowruz, during trips to Ankara and Cairo, and with interviews with media outlets such as Al Arabiya and Dawn TV."
Like his Cairo speech, Obama's Ramadan greeting was sprinkled with Arabic words and references that were meant both to resonate with the Islamic world -- by signaling that Obama knows something about its traditions -- and to educate non-Muslims, said Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"To non-Muslims, it tries to teach a little about Ramadan, to US Muslims it affirms that they are part of this society, to non-American Muslim "communities" (once again the plural), there is a message of warmth and inclusiveness," Brown told me. "Like the Cairo speech, it is aimed at individuals and communities, not at leaders and states. Of course, for such a holiday greeting you wouldn't expect anything else."
Valparaiso University
The speech brought a quick salute from the Council of American-Islamic Relations, and Asma Afsaruddin, professor of Islamic studies at Indiana University, predicted the message would go over well with Muslims worldwide.
"He modeled a confident and non-threatening Christian-Muslim relationship in which no one has to give up any of their particular beliefs and practices to feel comfortable with the other,"
Afsaruddin told me. "Muslims are much-needed allies in this common battle against extremism, not obstacles, according to him. It is a message that I believe in the longer run will change more hearts and opinions in the Muslim world than the swashbuckling narratives of previous years."
Reaction in the Middle Eastern press was muted, perhaps because the video was released late in the day across most of that region. Al-Arabiya ran a fairly straightforward recap of the speech, while the Israeli newspaper Haaretz zeroed in on Obama's expression of "unyielding" support for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
As has become its practice, the White House immediately released versions of the video with a set of captioned versions and transcripts that would do Babel well -- from Arabic to Persian to Urdu -- and sent it out over Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.
Meanwhile, over at America.gov, the U.S. State Department is offering a flashy package called "Ramadan Around the World: A Mosaic of Traditions" that includes a gallery of photos from Ramadan around the world and a set of essays from Muslim American authors writing about what Ramadan means to them. And Voice of America had its own Ramadan package featured Friday.
It's all very well-packaged and polished in the typical Obama style, but is the charm offensive working? Sure, Obama remains popular with the Islamic world -- in Egypt, they're even naming the best dates of the year in his honor -- but deep chasms separate the U.S. from many Islamic-majority countries, as we saw in the hero's welcome accorded Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi when he arrived in Tripoli after his release from prison.
It begs the question: The White House can send messages to the Islamic world all it wants, but is anybody listening?
One possible answer may come from -- of all places -- YouTube itself. As TechPresident.com's Micah Sifry noted some time back, YouTube's Insight tool allows us to see where Obama's videos are viewed, such as the below map, which shows where his Cairo speech was viewed.
TechPresident.com
That information wasn't available yet for the President's Ramadan greeting, which the good folks at YouTube tell me may just be a matter of insufficient data. With any luck, though, we'll soon be able to see who heard the American President wish them Ramadan Kareem.
What they do next, of course, is an entirely different question.
Weigh in: Will the Islamic world Friend Obama on Facebook? Or will these messages get caught in the international spam filter of mistrust and anger?
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Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=46010&tsp=1
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