‘US building bridges with Muslims’
Aligarh:
It has been a little over a year since Barack Obama delivered his “A New Beginning” speech at Cairo University where he addressed the Muslim world. Rashad Hussain, the US President’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, took stock of the tangibles of the Obama administration’s engagement with Muslims on Monday at the Aligarh Muslim University.
“In the first year after the Cairo speech, there has been progress in three major areas. The first area has been the creation of a broad framework to engage Muslim countries around the world. For many years, the basis of engagement was just in the issue of national security or counter-terrorism,” Hussain said.
“The President recognises that Muslims are one-fourth of the world’s population. You cannot engage one-fourth of the world’s population based on the belief of a small, fringe minority of people,” he said.
“The second main area of change has been partnerships in a number of areas including education, health, entrepreneurship, science, technology, interfaith dialogue to mention just a few of them,” he said, before listing a series of action plans for the Muslim world. He talked of reducing incidence of Polio in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and certain states of India; of the appointment of three Science Envoys for the Muslim world; and the Global Technology Innovation Fund which will be investing up to $3 billion.
The third main area has been an “affirmative, long term strategy” whose results “may not be as glamorous or obvious in the short-term.” “In the new National Security Strategy, the administration sees it counter-productive to use terms such as Islamic Terrorism or Jihadists. The reason for that is that — as the President mentioned in Cairo — has nothing to do with Islam,” he said. “To give that the title ‘Islamic Terrorism’ actually provides a dignified term to describe terrorism, which is wrong and actually gives credibility to those that were arguing that terrorism has something to do with Islam....”
Hussain, whose parents migrated to the US from India interacted with senior faculty members and students over two separate sessions. The 32-year-old also talked about growing up in the US and referred to his life to clear misconceptions. “My sister wore the hijab throughout university. She is a paediatrician; she now wears the hijab as a paediatrician in the United States,” said Hussain, who holds a Yale Law Degree and a Masters Degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University.
Aligarh:
It has been a little over a year since Barack Obama delivered his “A New Beginning” speech at Cairo University where he addressed the Muslim world. Rashad Hussain, the US President’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, took stock of the tangibles of the Obama administration’s engagement with Muslims on Monday at the Aligarh Muslim University.
“In the first year after the Cairo speech, there has been progress in three major areas. The first area has been the creation of a broad framework to engage Muslim countries around the world. For many years, the basis of engagement was just in the issue of national security or counter-terrorism,” Hussain said.
“The President recognises that Muslims are one-fourth of the world’s population. You cannot engage one-fourth of the world’s population based on the belief of a small, fringe minority of people,” he said.
“The second main area of change has been partnerships in a number of areas including education, health, entrepreneurship, science, technology, interfaith dialogue to mention just a few of them,” he said, before listing a series of action plans for the Muslim world. He talked of reducing incidence of Polio in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and certain states of India; of the appointment of three Science Envoys for the Muslim world; and the Global Technology Innovation Fund which will be investing up to $3 billion.
The third main area has been an “affirmative, long term strategy” whose results “may not be as glamorous or obvious in the short-term.” “In the new National Security Strategy, the administration sees it counter-productive to use terms such as Islamic Terrorism or Jihadists. The reason for that is that — as the President mentioned in Cairo — has nothing to do with Islam,” he said. “To give that the title ‘Islamic Terrorism’ actually provides a dignified term to describe terrorism, which is wrong and actually gives credibility to those that were arguing that terrorism has something to do with Islam....”
Hussain, whose parents migrated to the US from India interacted with senior faculty members and students over two separate sessions. The 32-year-old also talked about growing up in the US and referred to his life to clear misconceptions. “My sister wore the hijab throughout university. She is a paediatrician; she now wears the hijab as a paediatrician in the United States,” said Hussain, who holds a Yale Law Degree and a Masters Degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University.
