Global Policy Forum

by Jane Perlez

Rawia Ismail, a vivacious young teacher in Toledo, Ohio, her head covered with an Islamic head scarf, appears in a U.S. government video that will have its first public showing this week on national television in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.

The Lebanese-born Ismail is shown with her three smiling children in her all-American kitchen, at a school softball game and in front of her class, extolling American values. "I didn't see any prejudice anywhere in my neighborhood after Sept. 11," Ismail says. The portrayal of Ismail as a woman who practices her Muslim faith in America with the greatest of ease is one of the images that the Bush administration is offering to the Muslim world as an example of how America is not at war with Islam.

The message, in four videos about the life of American Muslims that are to be shown in Indonesia and other Islamic countries, is one of tolerance at home and a desire to reach out abroad. The videos are part of a major campaign, conceived by a former Madison Avenue advertising executive, Charlotte Beers, who is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to sell the United States to a skeptical - and in places, hostile - Muslim world.

They tell the stories of a prominent doctor, Elias Zerhouni, the Algerian-born director of the National Institutes of Health; a Libyan-born baker, Abdul Hammuda, in Toledo; a Brooklyn-born New York Fire Department medic, Farooq Muhammad, and Ismail. The theory underpinning the videos and newspaper ads and radio spots that will accompany them is that the United States is a misunderstood place. In reality, the message implies, America recognizes Islam as an important religion and one of the fastest-growing religions in America.

Another feature of the broader campaign is a new radio station, Radio Sawa, that broadcasts in the Arab world, playing pop music in Arabic and English and providing top-of-the-hour news from an American point of view. Muslim academics from Asia and the Middle East are also being sent to the United States for study tours. More than 20 principals of Islamic schools in Indonesia visited the United States last summer.

At a preview of the videos here Tuesday, presided over by the American ambassador, Ralph Boyce, and attended by Indonesian journalists and academics, the reception was mixed. Indeed, inside the State Department, some diplomats who have lived in Islamic countries criticized the scripts before their release for being patronizing and too simplistic, department officials said. Some adjustments were made, they said. But according to the viewers Tuesday, not enough.

The viewers were skeptical about whether life for Muslims in the United States really was that rosy. No East or Southeast Asia Muslims appeared in the videos, even though the videos were being introduced in this region, they said. It was as if the State Department believed that Muslims lived only in Arab countries and only those Muslims had migrated to the United States, several in the audience said.

The most telling critique came from Rizal Mallarangeng, a television host and political analyst who has just finished eight years of study at Ohio State University. Mallarangeng praised the State Department for trying to overcome the hostility in the Islamic world toward the United States. But, he said, the videos' story lines missed the complexities of being a Muslim in America.

"I have friends like this," he said referring to the characters in the videos. "They want to be good Muslims and good Americans. This is a bipolar way of life, and the question always is how to solve the perpetual conflict." There are straightforward matters, Mallarangeng said, like how a Muslim student could pray the requisite number of times while attending an American public school. "How does a student find a place to pray?" he asked. "At an American public school there is no religion and I understand. But what does the religious father of a Muslim student say at home about this?"Others in the audience said that by presenting a picture of universal tolerance in the United States, the videos bordered on being propaganda.

Muhammad, the Fire Department medic in Brooklyn, for example, speaks of working with colleagues of the Hindu, Christian and Jewish faiths. "We're all brothers and sisters," he says. Zerhouni, of the National Institutes of Health, says, "The tolerance and support I have received myself is remarkable," and, "I don't think there is any other country in the world where different people from different countries are as accepted and welcomed as members of a society."

To make a more convincing case to skeptical Indonesians, said Mohammed Rusmadi, a journalist at the Islamic newspaper Rakyat Merdeka, he would have liked to see American Muslims actually living alongside people of other religions. "It would be good to see American Muslims interacting with American Jews," he said.

The videos shown Tuesday are intended for a number of Islamic countries. So far, the Egyptian government has not allowed them to be shown on its television stations, saying that it does not accept paid programming from a foreign country, an American diplomat in Cairo said. But the embassy is still pursuing the case, he said.

In Pakistan, the programs have not yet been offered to the government-run television station because of the uncertainties in the aftermath of the recent election, in which militant Islamic parties showed surprising strength, an American official there said.

Indonesia was chosen as the first country to see the series of videos because it is the most populous Muslim country, a State Department official said. Neighboring Malaysia is scheduled to begin broadcasting the series next week.

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