Obama gives his best shot to win over the Muslims

CAIRO, Thursday

US President Barack Obama, when he addressed the Muslim world today, faced an Arab public that remains sceptical of US leadership but whose perception has recently warmed, a US pollster said.

But many Arabs are still withholding judgment on President Obama’s administration, and he has a chance to win greater approval to mend ties with world Muslims, said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies.

“People had completely shut down and weren’t listening any more to American leadership ... What Obama was able to successfully do was to get people back,” Mr Mogahed told Reuters in Cairo, where she released details of a recent Gallup survey of Arab views toward Washington.

President Obama used his address in Cairo to try to repair some of the damage to America’s image caused by the Iraq war, US treatment of military detainees and the lack of progress in Middle East peace talks. Aides said his speech reached out to Muslims but also dealt with tough issues like the peace process and extremism.

“I think that a speech can make a huge difference,” Mr Mogahed said. “Muslims around the world want very much to engage with the West, and with the United States significantly, but want to engage as equal partners, instead of a relationship of paternalism.”

President Obama has cautioned against expecting too much from the speech, which he said was just the first step in opening a broader dialogue with the Muslim world. Arab approval ratings of US leadership remained low -- at a median of about 25 per cent -- in a survey across 11 Arab countries conducted after Obama took office, higher than in the last months of the prior administration in all but two countries.

Gallup, in a summary of the poll results, said the rise may reflect Obama’s pledge to pull US troops from Iraq and close its detention centre at Guantanamo. The success of the US leader’s diplomatic initiatives in the region -- like advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace and halting Iran’s nuclear programme -- may depend on how well Obama, whose father was a Muslim and who lived in Indonesia as a boy, is able to improve US-Islamic ties.

Of the Arab countries surveyed by Gallup, Mauritania had the highest approval of US leadership at 56 per cent, up from 44 per cent toward the end of former President George W. Bush’s tenure. Approval in US ally Saudi Arabia surged to 29 per cent from 12 previously, while a quarter of Egyptians also expressed approval, up from 6 per cent before Obama came to office.

But Palestinian opinion of US leadership, already low, deteriorated to just 7 per cent in the survey, taken shortly after an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed about 1,400 Palestinians. Fourteen Israelis also died.

Mr Mogahed said President Obama still had a chance to turn public opinion around in the Arab world, noting that significant chunks of the population were still undecided on his leadership.