Barack Obama's First 100 Days - For the Muslim World

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” When President Barack Obama said that during his January 2009 presidential inaugural address, he sent a clear message to the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.

A few weeks ago in Ankara, he fulfilled his promise to give a major foreign policy speech from a capital in a Muslim-majority country in the first 100 days of his presidency. Obama told the Turkish Parliament that, “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.”

So President Obama has done a remarkable job in his outreach to the greater Muslim world, where perception of the United States had suffered immensely from the garbled rhetoric and actions of the George W. Bush administration.

And many American leaders are following suit to bridge the diplomacy gap with the greater Muslim world. A group of 34 — including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Congressman Vin Weber — suggested in a recent report, Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World, some ways to improve US-Muslim relations. Moroccan Ambassador Aziz Mekouar called the report “a most constructive blueprint for building relationships of cooperation between the United States and the Muslim world.”

The report suggests that the U.S. partner with governments, multilateral institutions and philanthropic organizations to make education a more powerful engine for employment and entrepreneurship in the Muslim world. The U.S. and Muslim governments can “gain credibility and help transform a high-risk youth generation into a broad and deep pool of skilled workers.”

Albright spoke about the report at a dinner with about 80 ambassadors, journalists and political leaders on the state of US-Muslim relations within the Obama administration. The event was hosted by Moroccan Ambassador Mekouar, and included a remarkable range of players, from former Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, to Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha to Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“When I became Secretary of State, we did not have Muslims employed in the State Department,” Albright said that evening. “I went back to my notes, when I was writing my book…and I had various notes which read, ‘Learn more about Islam’.”

Albright gave Obama an “A+” for his engagement with the Muslim world, but said better engagement “cannot be done without the people in this room.” Laughing, she added, “We have our work cut out for us.”

We do indeed, Madame Secretary.

Job creation and economic development are two ways Obama can expand his reach. Investing here could reduce the threat of extremism by providing youth with opportunities for employment. Supporting effective governments and civic participation, as the report suggests, will help, too.

As Obama moves forward, it is imperative that his administration ensure that his words to the Muslim world turn into tangible policy changes on the ground.

As we Americans consider the first 100 days of his presidency, let’s work together so that his words become a collective “audacity of hope” in every corner of the world for the next 100 days, months and years.

This column was originally published on CNN Anderson Cooper 360

Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of www.TheMuslimGuy.com and is a contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington.