The president expressed an intention to engage the Middle East immediately, and his new envoy to the region, former Senator George Mitchell, was expected to arrive in Egypt on Tuesday for a visit that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy," Obama told the Saudi-owned, Al-Arabiya news channel, which is based in Dubai.
Obama said the United States had made mistakes in the past but "that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."
During his presidency, former President George W. Bush gave several interviews to Al-Arabiya but the wars he launched in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a massive backlash against the United States in the Muslim world.
Obama called for a new partnership with the Muslim world "based on mutual respect and mutual interest." He talked about growing up in Indonesia, the Muslim world's most populous nation, and noted that he has Muslim relatives.
http://newageislam.com/obama-reaches-out-to-muslim-world--/islam-and-the-west/d/1156
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5:10 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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