by Jeffry R. Halverson In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy wrote an opinion piece in the British daily The Guardian, stating: [Bin Laden] has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by American foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its [...]

by Jeffry R. Halverson Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking about the diplomatic potential of Muslim hip-hop when I posted a blog about it for COMOPS Journal back in September of 2009. Recently we heard from Tyson Amir, one of the Muslim artists that I featured in the blog, and he had some interesting [...]

by Steven R. Corman A new “strategic framework” for U.S. Public Diplomacy has at long last been released. Oddly, it is a slide show rather than a paper, but perhaps that’s because it is to be the basis for a briefing today. My colleague Phil Seib has already expressed disappointment in the new proposal: It is [...]

by Jeff Halverson In the war of ideas for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world, cultural diplomacy can go a long way. The US government may not be very popular abroad, but our cultural products certainly are. Many Muslims hate our policies, but they still love our movies, listen to our pop music, [...]

by Steven R. Corman Yesterday the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan over the last year.  It concluded that “2009 proved to be the deadliest year yet for civilians since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”  The surprise is what it says about the [...]

by Mark Woodward* The terminology used in English and other European languages to discuss Islam, and especially Muslim political movements, shifts constantly. There is a general consensus, shared by many in the Muslim world, that “radical” and “extremist” are appropriately characterize individuals and movements that advocate and/or employ violence to accomplish their political ends. Beyond [...]

by Steven R. Corman Last Friday, Thomas Friedman published and op-ed in the New York Times entitled America vs. The Narrative in which he expressed bewilderment/exasperation that the anti-U.S narrative is getting so much traction in the Muslim world: Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims [...]

by Steven R. Corman I just ran across this interesting release from Gallup.  It cross-analyzes data from Gallup’s Communications Index “which measures the extent to which respondents are connected via electronic communications” and approval of U.S. leadership. The results are not too encouraging.  Basically, the more wired the respondents are, the less inclined they are [...]

by Steven R. Corman A new study of public opinion in Muslim countries was released this week by  WorldPublicOpinion.org.  The study was conducted between July and September of 2008, using in-home interviews of around 1100 people in each of Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan, plus “supplemental polling” of 500-1000 people in each of Jordan, the Palestinian [...]

by Steven R. Corman In November of last year I published an op-ed piece expressing my hope that President Barack Obama would follow-through with his campaign pledges to use humility to help repair the country’s image with Muslims abroad. In his first week in office, Obama has made two important moves in this direction.  First, [...]