NEWSUS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Ever since taking office in 2009, the Obama Administration has been engaged in an all-out offensive to redefine the way America does its business abroad. Specifically, Obama has elevated development and diplomacy as both essential pillars of our national security and economic answers to the world’s challenges and opportunities. That strategy became ever more apparent in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.

What makes this approach so different from what we had before?

First, the sheer breadth of engagement this administration has taken with the rest of the world has been unprecedented, or at least was simply unheard of in the previous administration. From a speech in Cairo and a town hall event with students in Shanghai, to delving into the emerging mobile market in Africa and much more, America’s international rock stars have taken rather unconventional approaches to the act of diplomacy.

They’ve found ways, through technology, to communicate directly with the citizens of countries where high level diplomatic engagement has been difficult, and even in places where it’s been solid in the past.

For nearly two years, my fellow activists and I have been urging the White House that it must do more to prevent the outbreak of another war in Sudan. Now it seems the administration has listened.

President Obama was the first head of state to commit to attending last month’s special UN session concerning the referendum on independence for Southern Sudan. This vote - fewer than 90 days away - is prescribed in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which ended more than 20 years of civil war. If Sudan is serious about peace, it must not only permit the referendum in an atmosphere free of violence, but must accept the will of the people should they choose independence. A vote for secession will also require that Khartoum works cooperatively with the government of Southern Sudan to resolve all issues regarding borders and oil revenues.

Recently, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof pushed the boundaries of our national conversation by daring to suggest that not all Muslims think and act alike.  He’s worth quoting at length:

“Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about 'Muslims' as an undifferentiated mass…. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs."

Kristof is right to call out the American public, and the American media, for its monolithic portrayal of Muslims and Arabs.  So monolithic is that image, in fact, that this simple and really not all that surprising fact bears repeating:  Not all Arabs are Muslims, and the majority of American Muslims are not Arab.

Finding stories that treat Muslims and Arabs as people, rather than objects, can be a tall order in the current media market.  I suggest starting with author Alia Malek’s book, A Country Called Amreeka, which uses profiles to tell a hundred years’ of history of Arabs in America, or The Mosque in Morgantown, a documentary about one woman’s challenge to her West Virginia community's narrow interpretation of Islam.