USA Today, June 3, 2009, Wednesday

USA Today

June 3, 2009, Wednesday

USA Today

Obama plans to reach out to Muslim world

CAIRO — Muhammad Farag isn't planning to take time away from his studies to tune in when President Obama speaks at his university here Thursday.

"It's not like the world will change after he ends his speech, will it?" says Farag, 27, an engineering student. He sums up his feelings about Obama's historic visit with one word: "So?"

Across town, merchants in the narrow, dusty passageways of the 14th-century Khan al-Khalili bazaar are only vaguely aware of Obama's visit to Egypt. But their faces brighten at the mention of his name. "Mr. Obama is welcome anytime in Cairo," says Hassam Yosef, 25. "You have a friend in the Muslim man."

Obama touches down here in this ancient heart of the Arab world Thursday on a critical mission: to try to repair the United States' relations with Muslims after a decade of violence and recrimination, and to reinforce voices of moderation in a long-volatile region.

The setting of his speech — the capital of a country that calls itself a democracy but is run as a police state — speaks to the complexities before him. In many Muslim nations, from Lebanon to Afghanistan, where Obama's words also will be heard, extremists are gaining ground.

Obama promised a new approach to the Muslim world during his campaign. He said he would address Muslims from a major Muslim capital early in his presidency to try to soften hearts and minds hardened by the U.S. response to 9/11, its close ties to Israel, the war in Iraq, its treatment of terrorism suspects and more.

"The president will be addressing a group of people who not only feel that U.S. government policy has wronged them, but that they've unfairly been its targets," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

The speech will be at 6:10 a.m. ET. The White House says the president plans to remind Muslims of his personal connection to them: His late father was a Muslim from Kenya, and the president spent some of his childhood living in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population — more than 206 million.

Grand Sheik Mohammad Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University and mosque, one of the world's top Muslim leaders, says he appreciates that Obama "rejects the idiot racism … that any normal person would reject."

Obama's speech may be most closely watched, though, for how he addresses some of the intractable foreign policy challenges he faces, from Iran's nuclear ambitions and the prospects for a Palestinian state to the military buildup in Afghanistan and troop drawdown in Iraq.

Aides say Obama will make the case that better relations with the Islamic world will contribute to peace, prosperity and security for all nations. "He doesn't hesitate to take on tough issues," says deputy national security adviser Mark Lippert.

As more U.S. troops move into Afghanistan and elections are held in Lebanon and elsewhere that could give Islamist groups more power in the region, "it's an important time," says national security spokesman Denis McDonough. "The president believes it's an important opportunity to advance the national interest."

Americans seem to agree. In a Gallup Poll taken on the eve of Obama's trip, 76% said the quality of the relationship between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.

Ali Hadi, vice provost of the American University in Cairo, says people in Egypt and across the Islamic world want a better relationship with the United States. After the 9/11 attacks, "the entire world, including the Arab and Muslim worlds, was very sympathetic," Hadi says. "Unfortunately, the U.S. did not capitalize on that to lead the world in a better direction. This is a chance for the United States to redirect."

New Gallup polls from 11 Arab countries show dramatic improvement in approval ratings for the U.S. government's leadership in eight of the countries since Obama took office. The approval ratings, however, are still well below 50%. Egypt's approval rating of U.S. leadership was just 6% in May 2008; it's now up to 25%.

There's a weariness and some cynicism among the young here.

Farag says President George W. Bush publicly promoted democracy in Egypt and peace in the region, as did Bill Clinton and other U.S. presidents. But because of Egypt's long role as a peacemaker and U.S. ally, democratic nations have looked the other way while President Hosni Mubarak has ruled under emergency law for 28 years, imprisoning thousands of dissidents, political opponents and anyone else he wishes at will.

"After a while," Farag says, "you know exactly what's going to be happening."

Obama will make a concerted effort to reach out to Muslim youth when he speaks at Cairo University, McDonough says. Hundreds of students have been given tickets to attend.

Rania Al Malky, 37, editor of the Daily News Egypt, says she believes most young people are open to Obama's message. "People are definitely still a little skeptical but not extremely skeptical," she says. "People feel he is familiar to them. They see him in a very different light from any previous president."

The human rights issues in Egypt, she says, need to be addressed — and the White House says Obama will do that. But Al Malky says Obama should tread carefully there because "no one wants the U.S. to try to impose democracy."

Obama is getting no shortage of advice about what to say in an address that's scheduled to last less than an hour.

Human rights in Egypt

Like presidents before him, Obama is taking heat from some human rights groups, such as the Alliance for Egyptian Americans, that fear he will paper over Egypt's abuses in the name of maintaining relations with a strategic ally and longtime peacemaker in the Arab world.

After a recent meeting with Egyptian pro-democracy activists, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the issue would come up during Obama's trip, but said it wouldn't be a dominant theme.

"We always raise democracy and human rights," she said. "And I think that there is a great awareness on the part of the Egyptian government that with young people like this and with enhanced communications, it is in Egypt's interest to move more toward democracy and to exhibit more respect for human rights."

Some say it's a mistake not to push harder. "It's great that Obama's going there to give a speech, but it's going to send mixed messages. It's going to give validation to a repressive regime," says Aladdin Elaasar of the Alliance of Egyptian Americans. "It is a brutal regime, and people are living in subhuman conditions."

In Cairo, however, people don't necessarily expect — or even want — much from Obama when it comes to human rights issues.

If he pushes for change and it happens, that would be great, Farag says. "If, over the next year, we start to see more democratic reforms, ending marshal law, that would be a positive thing," he says. But "there's a lot that we should be doing, not him. The solving of our democracy issues is our problem to deal with."

Alterman, who heads CSIS' Middle East Program, says efforts to push democracy simply don't play well in the Mideast.

"In the last administration, we heard a lot about democracy and liberty and freedom," Alterman says. "These are ideas that come out of our own enlightenment, history and tradition, and I hold these ideals dear. But if I'm honest, I have to concede that they don't really resonate among Muslim audiences; justice does."

The influence of extremists

Although it is officially banned, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood has been making gains in parliamentary elections in Egypt, and its members now hold 88 of 454 seats. The organization, which seeks to impose an Islamic state, publicly renounces violence and is pushing for democratic reforms so its members can gain more seats through open elections.

During an interview in his office in which his cellphone rang incessantly, Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Chairman Mohamed Habib emphasized that "we don't like violence" and favor "the peaceful changing of authority."

He said he's optimistic Obama can bring change on behalf of the Palestinians but expressed concern that Democrats in the U.S., particularly Clinton, are "more on the side of the Zionists."

Former United Nations secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, now living in Cairo and serving as the chairman of the National Council for Human Rights, says the Brotherhood "represents extremists" and is funded by extremist groups from outside Egypt.

Elaasar called the rise of the Brotherhood and similar groups "a danger that the West is not paying attention to." The Brotherhood, he says, "has a very fundamentalist agenda. It would turn Egypt into a theocracy."

The White House is watching parliamentary elections in Lebanon that could see Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., win in a victory that could boost influence for Iran and Syria.

Officials haven't said whether Obama will address the June 7 elections in his speech. Clinton and Vice President Biden have visited the country, sparking accusations of interference from Hezbollah.

Justice for Palestinians

Obama is not likely to offer a point-by-point Arab-Israeli peace plan, but Muslims expect strong pro-Palestinian statements from him. Analysts say if he wants to earn credibility with the Muslim people, he'll have to offer something concrete beyond recent demands that Israel halt West Bank settlements.

Sheik Tantawi will not discuss the Muslim Brotherhood, human rights issues or the elections in Lebanon, but has plenty to say when it comes to the peace process. Obama should use "the power and the weight" of his office to "give the Palestinians their rights," he says.

It's a common theme here.

Ahmed Gheina, a tour guide at the Egyptian Textile Museum on the edge of the bazaar, calls Obama a "good man" for wanting to bring change to U.S.-Muslim relations. But he wants to hear some specifics on the peace process. "We want him to stay with the Palestinian people. We want him to change (the U.S. relationship with) the Israelis," he says.

Analysts say that after addressing the U.S.-Muslim relationship in a post-inauguration interview with an Arab TV network and in an April speech in Turkey, Obama must offer specifics this time.

"He can only give the 'America loves and respects the Muslim world' speech so many times," says former Mideast peace negotiator Aaron David Miller. "In my view, Cairo should be about dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue, but it has to be backed up by a strategy. …You can only get by being Barack Hussein Obama for so long. "

In an interview with National Public Radio this week, Obama said achieving peace in the Middle East "is not going to be an easy path."

He did not say whether he will offer an expanded policy prescription in Cairo. He said he will be tough on both sides as the process moves forward.

"It is important for us to be clear about what we believe will lead to peace and that there's not equivocation and there's not a sense that we expect only compromise on one side," he told NPR. "When it comes to the concrete, then the politics of it get difficult, both within the Israeli and the Palestinian communities. But, look, if this was easy, it would've already been done."

Changing hearts at home

"Any American president's principle audience is domestic," says Lisa Anderson, provost of the American University in Cairo.

Obama's outline of why the Arab-Muslim world matters to the United States "is all supposed to echo back home," she says.

Obama has some work to do in reshaping opinions about Muslims in the United States, as well. A new Gallup poll finds that only 21% have a favorable opinion of Muslim countries.

Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian whose grandfather served as prime minister, says too many people think of Muslims as extremists. "This is our main problem," he says. "How to explain that they represent only 2-to-3% of Muslims?"

Atef Fahmey, 29, who sells brightly colored cotton scarves and dresses from a small stall in the middle of the city's mazelike bazaar, says he has a simple hope for Obama's speech. He says he hopes Obama tells the world that "Islam is a good religion, not bad like some people say in America."

Contributing: Theodore May