Bush admin's outreach to Islamic world is Muslimless

[mburbank]

By Robin Wright and Al Kamen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A02

The Bush administration's outreach to the Islamic world is in no hurry. And it includes no Muslims.

Karen Hughes, who was appointed a month ago to craft a bold new approach for U.S. public diplomacy, is not expected to take the job until as late as the fall, according to administration and congressional sources. The delay is already undermining U.S. credibility, with a well-placed U.S. official warning about "the gap between rhetoric and reality."

Dina Powell, the new No. 2 official in charge of public diplomacy, is also not expected to take the job for at least two more months, administration sources say.

The delay comes as a Government Accountability Office report released this month criticized the administration for failing to develop a strategy to improve the image of the United States as "recent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world."

"Such anti-American sentiments can increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States' ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics' enthusiasm for U.S. business services and products," the report warned.

Despite the administration's repeated pledges of outreach, the State Department's main program directed at the Islamic world has no Muslim staff, U.S. officials say. "There's a dearth of Muslims in the State Department generally," a senior State Department official said. Like Powell, who is Egyptian American, most Arabs in the administration are Christians, sources said.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States and is expected to become the second-largest religious bloc here in the next few years, but the government has not tapped into its own community as part of the global outreach, U.S. officials say.

"It's very important for American Muslims to be involved, as they're an important conduit to the wider Islamic world and they should be speaking out," the second U.S. official added. "But American Muslims generally feel they're not included like other communities. We should be talking to them, as they have a lot of knowledge of the region."

The failure to include American Muslims has sparked criticism from Middle East and democracy experts. "You can do Muslim outreach without Muslims and it doesn't mean Dina Powell can't be effective, but the administration has not made much effort to integrate Muslim Americans in this effort," said Thomas Carothers, director of the democracy project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.