By Muhammad Sahimi Aside from the symbolic meaning of that choice –choosing Cairo as a place for delivering his speech-, we need to look at what the President and his administration have done to Muslims and the Islamic world ever since he took over in January 2009. I look at this at the levels of…
Although she’d cultivated an academic interest in Islam at university, Willow Wilson’s religious awakening really came in the hospital. She was suffering from adrenal distress, and its symptoms – including insomnia and hair loss – would last for a year and a half. “Being ill had shaken something loose in my head,” the 27-year-old writes…
Background: More than a year after Barack Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo, where he laid out his vision to repair relations with the Muslim world, Muslims are growing weary and disillusioned with the U.S. president and his international policies, according to a new survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Summary: Publics of largely Muslim…
In his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized that Muslim women in the U.S. are free to don the hijab. Obama’s statements triggered strong criticism among Arab intellectuals in France.. Reformist writer Abdelwahab Meddeb, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X in Nanterre and author of The…
President Obama announced that the United States would embark on a business exchange program in areas such as telecommunication and electronic technology, health care, education and infrastructure with the Muslim World. It is a part of the larger outreach efforts by his administration to begin a new era in US relations with Muslims. He declared…
