Obama Charts A New Direction With Muslim World: ‘We Are Offering A Hand Of Friendship’

Yesterday, President Obama sat down with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television for his first formal interview in office. The interview was notable not only for the substance of Obama’s remarks, but also for the symbolism of directly reaching out to Muslims so early in his presidency. Obama said that his job “to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.”

Host Hisham Melhem noted that President Bush had framed the struggle against extremism as a “war on terror,” using terminology like “Islamic fascism” to describe America’s adversary. “You’ve always framed it in a different way,” Melhem said. Obama then talked about the advantages of shifting away from Bush’s language:

OBAMA: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.

“But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship,”

Watch Obama's First Formal Interview on Al-Arabiya TV.



Even babies know to choose between Obama and Bush.