Over 300 Academics and policy-makers from all over the world gathered to attend the Brookings Institution-sponsored US-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar on Monday.
(Karen Hughes at the 2006 US-Islamic World Forum)
Agence France Presse reported that many of the Muslim delegates in attendance said they hoped to see Obama win the Democratic nomination and become the next US President.
“‘I would like to see Obama become president of America because he champions ‘change and hope’, which we Muslims need as much as the Americans do,’ Islamic television preacher Amr Khaled told AFP.
'the Indonesian people would love to see a (US) president who has studied at an elementary school in Jakarta,’ Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia's largest Islamic organisations, told AFP in a reference to Obama.
But Dhiya Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on terrorist groups, warned that US policy under the next president would be ‘a continuation of current policies, though in a less extreme way than the conservative Republican administration’. The Bush administration has ‘planted landmines everywhere’ for its successor, making it impossible for the next president to suddenly reverse course, Rashwan said…The Bush administration has also ‘imposed phobia’ on the Americans, something US politicians will find difficult to change, Rashwan added.
‘If the Democrats win, they will be very sensitive to the American image… The American image has to improve because it can't get worse,’ said Mehran Kamrava, a political science professor at the Qatar branch of Georgetown University.
‘But I don't think they (future administration) will work hard for a rapprochement with the Islamic world because Muslims are not a strong voice,’ he added.”
For more on the forum, hereis Amb. Marc Ginsberg's journal of his experiences there. The Gulf Times of Qatar published this piece of reporting.
