The United States, Europe, and the Muslim World: Revitalizing Relations After September 11

We need to think hard and long and often about this effort, because there are new rules being born and new problems emerging.  We need to be exposed to penetrating questions.  And when we've earned it, we need to gather deeper and wider support.

So we've had many debates of late, not the least of which is a series of hearings with the Congress, which I found an opportunity to seek support and gain counsel as well.  I view this event today, Dr. Hunter, in exactly the same mode.

Such a group as are here -- members of the Diplomatic Corps, our international corporate representatives, senior government and NGO officials, journalists, and ambassadors representing many of our key partners in the coalition -- assures us all of an interesting question-and-answer session.

One of those phrases meant to convey a continuum of effort in public diplomacy is something I've heard recently called "hard diplomacy and soft diplomacy." And we are the ones thought to be engaged in soft diplomacy.  But I don't like this word.  I think that it diminishes the transforming, the inspiring, life-expanding capacity of public diplomacy when it is at its best.

Let me illustrate by telling you a story about a woman, a professor I met in an Arab capital I recently visited.  She's a composite, but she's real.  She started out by telling me the anger and frustration she and many others felt about her perception of our Middle East policy and how others in the region perceived it.  She was actually saying she was glad she didn't work for the so-called "American University" because it would be tainted by its name.  She initially expressed doubt that bin Laden was the ringleader of the World Trade Center attacks.  Later, she confessed to me that she actually believed he was, but that it would be really impossible and unpopular to try to defend this with her students.

But what about that video, I asked her, that recently ran and was drum-rolled so often by Al Jazeera?  It contained a farewell confession of Ahmad al-Haznawi, a hijacker we identified and named on September 14th.  "Not even that," she said.  "No, they will not believe that a Muslim could do such a thing." They refused to HEAR.  It's a painful reality that we have come to grips with every day.  It's not what you say; it's what they hear -- what they can hear, what they can take in, what's allowable.

As we spent more time together, she asked me about the very bad treatment she had heard that Muslims encounter in the United States, presuming a dreary, dark story.  In fact, everyone asked me that question.  I was able to just tell her informally about most of the experiences of Muslims in America, because we've been students of this.  It's a good question.

The number of Muslims is rated somewhere between three and six million; it's hard to verify that number.  They clearly worship freely.  The conversion rate in the Muslim religion is 20 percent, which is higher than most sales curves we see today.  There are 1,200 mosques, each more beautiful than the next -- you have to see these mosques to understand what beauty and reverence and talent resides in the willingness and ability to build those mosques.  Muslim schools are put in place when needed and desired.

It's the story of a faithful group of people dealing with modern life and, I think, thriving.  Who are these people?  So we talked about a few that we are proud of and know about, some in Congress and in the Administration: President Bush's new Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Zerhouni, the Nobel Prize winner; the famous soccer player; our basketball star, whose father is an Imam, and so on.

A door began to open between us.  She actually wanted to hear more.  I liked her very much.  And as educated as she was -- she didn't know these things.  Then, she told me of other questions her students asked that she could not answer.  They don't understand why, if we're the U.S. -- the hyperpower -- we can't just command someone to do what we need done, demand that they do "this" -- get rid of "that" person who's not helpful.  And it's a bit daunting, as Dr. Hunter said, to start that far back to help people understand about the rule of law, about elected officials, about their rightful place, about what our Constitution and our people will allow us to do.

So I said, "This would have to be covered in a U.S. studies program -- could your university handle such a program?" And wistfully she said, "Well, not now." And I said, "Don't worry, we don't move that fast."

But she asked, "Will there be computers?" And I said, "Definitely, there would have to be, because that's how we communicate."

I asked, "How about if we tried to teach English?" She said, "Many of our students would like to learn English, because they want access to the door of science and technology, at which they will agree you are the best." I said, "Well, will you come with a group of teachers to the U.S. to study these things so you can guide us?" And she said, "Yes.  Yes, I'll come."

So all of a sudden -- not so suddenly -- we went from no to yes.  "Why is it that you're now willing in a different way?" I asked, although carefully.  And she said, "Because there's one other question I get asked that's as important as the others, and it is, 'Will I ever have a job?  Or will I be able to get a good job and live with that kind of integrity and help my family and thrive?'" Education is the great equalizer.  People, given the tools to succeed, will not turn to hate.

Now, listen, there is nothing small or soft or simple about this idea.  It's the hardest thing in the world to do well, to offer education to someone else.  Every single project or program in public diplomacy is in fact a form of education. 

But you know what?  We've had a test market of one particular form of education for 50 years.  It's our exchange programs.  Seven hundred thousand people over these years have come to taste, to see, to experience the real America.  The money we spend is multiplied by 80,000 volunteers, who with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, make 20,000 visits a year possible.

I told the Congress I've never seen a buy this good in my entire life.  For such a small investment and such a magnitude of people to help, so much is accomplished.  Let me tell you what's accomplished, because I asked, coming out of the business sector, what happens here?  What's worthwhile?

Nothing less than a transformation takes place.  We just had a brave woman, a Saudi novelist and journalist, who dared the rejection and anxiety that surrounded her when she said she was coming to visit the United States. 

These are her quotes: "Everyone says that Westerners are bad and mean, but it isn't true.  People here are telling a bunch of lies about the West.  The people I met are nice; they're friendly; they smile.  Nobody stares at you or follows you around.  They don't waste money." (That's questionable.) "They don't leave food around.  They respect limits.  Their customs are nice.  In America, men and women cooperate together to make their lives better.  They help each other.  They're organized, and they plan for the future.  They like to have real dialogues on many subjects.  The women are strong.  Old people are active and engaged."

And she said about the people with whom she lived in the home for that period of time, "There were three generations in the house, and they have been close to their neighbors for years.  Why do we get told these stories about how the family is broken in the West?"

That's transformation, and I can read you hundreds of these.  I've read them myself.  We need to know where we stand with something like exchanges.  And we have just gotten a big bump in expenditures on this with the Congress.

Just weeks after 9/11, we had a group of cynical, edgy journalists from Indonesia.  We gave them equipment, we asked them what interviews they wanted, and we sent them to American towns.  Here's a sample of their headlines on returning.  Now, this is something we've incorporated into public diplomacy.  If we can't prove to all our constituencies that this works, we don't have enough of a story.  So now we never have anybody coming here without following what they do when they get home and trying to track them later on as well.

Headline: "Americans Do Not Hate Muslims." "It's shameful that there should be anti-American protests in Indonesia." Now, this is not the writer.  It's the writer quoting an Imam he met from New York City.  "Here we are free to practice our religion.  In my home country, Iraq, I was not as free as I am here." Again, the Imam of the Islamic Center of America being quoted by a journalist.

Two reporters noted the sadness of worshipers in a New York mosque that Islam was being identified with terrorism.  A young reporter from an Islamic paper worried that her head covering would subject her to hostility, as she had heard so often, was pleased and surprised to discover, "America showed me only kindness."

Now, the question that sometimes follows discussions of so-called soft power is, look, how much good is this going to do, given the present hostilities?  Well, it's a good thing we didn't stop the exchanges when we had all the other crises, including in the Middle East, over the years.

In the coalition on the war on terrorism, a full 50 percent of the leadership of that coalition were once exchange students, and Secretary Powell told me that, when he was speaking with someone who knew the U.S. not just through government, but through those exchanges, he had a very much more productive dialogue.  How can it be otherwise?

So that question, why do it now under the hostilities, is not the right question.  I think the right question is how can we turn 20,000 exchanges a year into 40,000, into 400,000, into 4 million?  That's a modern marketing question that we know something about.  Because if we could capture this quality of self-discovery of America, the experiential dimension of being here on our roads, meeting our diverse people in their daily lives, we could then be "Heard."

So far, we have two good answers for the question I just put in your mouth: How do we magnify the results of the exchanges?  I'm very excited about these two programs, and we have support.  Secretary Powell has liked them from the beginning.  We've mentioned them to Congress.  We've gotten early funding. 

Here's something interesting.  The 700,000 exchange grantees who came here are not necessarily known to us any more.  They got lost.  We never planned for an alumni databank.  In some few countries we followed them.  We don't have what a local car dealer would have -- some idea where his customers are.  We're going to find them, we're going to fund the dialogue with them, and we're going to ask them to take an active role in discussing what happened to them in the U.S. and the capacity for transformation.

And we will see that not everyone will sign up, but most of them in these small markets where we've done the tracking have shown a great willingness to come together and to expand their influence.  They go home and do amazing things.  They decided -- this young group that came -- to form their own charity, and they went out and organized themselves, gave themselves a name, bought a computer, and do good works in their own country.

The second idea we have is to continue the premise of the information centers and libraries, many of which were closed in the last ten years.  But we can do this in a way that is actually an improvement because we can make these a virtual reality.  We can actually hold to a room size if we have to.  We can ask universities or local libraries or shopping malls to take these rooms.  We've got the most amazing team of people working on this.  You will walk in, and not only will you get the scholarly references, the computer banks, all of which are made more possible by technology, but you can also use virtual reality to see a small town in America, to have an interview, to listen to someone recite the Declaration of Independence, to hear a beautiful piece of music.  That's the goal.

But can anyone render this?  We have people from the Smithsonian, a group of people from Hollywood who make their living inventing that kind of visual imagery, and a wonderful film producer who is charting this with the people we have in the Bureau of International Information Programs.  We will have a model in the next three months, and then we will see about rolling those out all over the world, but especially in the Middle East where we have had such a limited or nonexistent dialogue.

Now, being heard in some cases must begin further back, with a search for common ground.  We know that people in the Middle East, and even in the Muslim majority countries, can't easily hear beyond the tumult of the many tragic and confusing stories that surround the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Well, does that mean we stop and wait till it gets better, as has been suggested to me several times?  Nothing could be more dangerous.  In years of engaging audiences on behalf of companies and their projects, I saw time and time again how dangerous and totally ineffective silence is as a tactic when troubled waters surround.

The debate around the articulation of the policy in the Middle East crisis is engaged daily, and not always can you see it, but I can assure you it gets daily, constant attention from President Bush and Secretary Powell and all of our teams.  Of course we urgently need to pursue the path to peace, but I do believe that we have to create another conversation on a different level, deliberately outside of this intense dialogue.

And there are, you know, many significant life issues that surround this moment and go past it, like the search for common ground, which means to be aware of what we share and to see if we can engage people for a change in expressing hope for a better life and jobs and education.

But there are disciplines we must follow.  We can't go in search of what we have in common by preaching or speaking only as the U.S. government in all of its bigness and power.  We concentrate not on what we want to say, but rather the response we hope to evoke.  This is a discipline in any communication effort, and it's one that we just discussed at great length when we had our Global Public Affairs Symposium.  How can we study and discipline ourselves to be thinking in terms of response?  In order to do that, you have to know and respect your audience enough to know where they're coming from.

When I was encouraged to tell my new professor friend, whom I referred to earlier, about the story of Muslim Life in America, she began to hear me.  And you know, it's a story of much more than that literal fact; it's about religious tolerance and the freedom to worship and to thrive.

Now, there are some other talented voices coming forward in this discussion well beyond the State Department.  We had begun to hear very early on from Muslim Americans who were concerned about the level of discourse, the negative perceptions in the Muslim world about the United States, and of course about the image of Muslim Americans here at home.  And while all do not agree on policy issues, they are virtually united in one way: in their appreciation for America and the values of respect for faith, family, and generosity.  And those are the three common ground issues we do have to start with.  That's a considerable foundation.

We do not seek to hold up one religion over another, or to inject ourselves into closely held personal faith; rather, we seek to recognize that this natural link is based on heritage, culture, and belief.

This group we met with on a regular basis, changing its membership, dealing with different people, hearing from those who spoke in many other agencies in the U.S. government, urged us to get this story heard and helped us choose candidates for some of the work that we might be able to present.

I want to show you some of the visuals that had to do with telling the story of Muslim Life in America, however briefly I can represent them.  We want to do more than our own story.  We want to pick up anything that's been used successfully in satellite television and other networks and other programming.  The first clip you're going to see is from the Arab News Network.  There are ten of these half-hour clips.

It starts somewhere in there with an autoworker who happens to be Muslim in Dearborn, Michigan.  I just want to give you the tone of this.

(Video clips were shown.)

This is only a teaser for you to tap into the website, "Islam" but this has some wonderful subjects and data.  We tried to be very inclusive in terms of links so that you could go further and learn as much as you were interested in.

One of the things we're learning is that Google, the search engine, reports that we come up number one on certain subjects.  So we're learning how to talk to our audience, we're learning who we're hearing from, and we're beginning to understand what we need to put on the website.

The second one (visual of the web page) is a more specific one, which is actually the origin for Muslim Life in America.  And what's interesting about this is the capacity of every embassy around the world to take these products and turn them into something much more productive and relevant for the local country.

The next one is Muslim Life (visual of web page) rendered in Russia for the parts of the world the embassy wants to use this in, and all the pictures were made relevant with key Russians and their dialogue and experiences, so that it doesn't always seem like it's so centered on the U.S.

We have an interesting note of encouragement.  We just recently got a confirmation that there's a newly formed Council of American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU).  The mission of the Council of American Muslims for Understanding is to educate both Americans and people outside the United States about the many important achievements of Muslims in America and throughout history.  To achieve these goals, they will host and sponsor seminars, speaking engagements, engage in media relationships, produce and distribute their own work, and organize cultural and educational exchange programs.

These kinds of organizations that go beyond what we could do in government will be indispensable in taking our stories and making them into an active dialogue.  And dialogue demands two-way communication.  If such organizations can cause people to come here and speak, and we can prove that we give them a large audience, that answers a really important need, which is for us to be seen as listeners, not just talkers.

There is another phrase we hear a lot, and we use it in a way to say, "How are we doing?" It's that phrase "winning the hearts and minds," and the subject of that varies depending on the source of the dialogue.  I have no quarrel with the thought that we must add hearts to minds, because it's an essential part of persuasion, and our charter is to both inform and influence.

When we sent out the stunning photographs that Joel Meyerowitz took of Ground Zero, which you can see here and here.  They have already gone to 20 cities, and will end going to 60.  It goes past the logic and the words into the kind of response that sometime overwhelms any other kind of response.  And we know what the response is.  It's stunned recognition of the devastation, and often the answer is, "I had no idea." And it changes people's perception of what we're about and what the war on terrorism is about.

The part that's disturbing about that phrase "winning the war" or "winning the hearts and minds" is the word "winning." I know it's intended to sound positive, but we need a more modest and substantive goal, which would be just create a dialogue, to engage in a productive debate that allows anger and frustration and disagreements, but not hate -- hate that's used to justify the killing of innocents.

You know, it's much easier to spread hate now.  It travels without any verification through the Information Revolution, and rumors harden into truth overnight.  This is some revolution.  It's more data overload than it is anything that allows inference and understanding.

Several weeks ago, I took part in a global webcast called "Womenfuture.com" with many women, young achievers.  On my panel was a young woman who said -- she's a real expert in the new media -- "We are drowning in information but desperate for context."

As the head of the Library of Congress, James Billington said, "It's not an accident that this is called the Age of Information, not the Age of Knowledge."

In such a time of information overload, context is absolutely crucial, and that's why we care so much about our primary goal of informing, about putting the daily articulation and explanation of U.S. policy on the website and in our embassies with clarity, accuracy and speed of delivery.

Through the leadership of the President and Secretary Powell, and the efforts of our Public Affairs Officers here and overseas, we translate all of those communications in six languages the same day, and within two days into 30 languages, for the sake of context.

To counter misinformation and provide truthful context, we formed the Coalition Information Centers (CICs).  This is a rolling news cycle we set up with the White House, starting in Islamabad and moving on to London and the U.S., because we needed to answer so quickly and correct the many myths and rumors.

So this is our appropriate first assignment, to inform.  But we will also seek to inform and influence in broader channels of distribution with programs that are increasingly relevant to an audience that goes beyond the first audience, elites and government.  This audience is very essential.  But we find ourselves in different territory, in broader audiences, and with different programming.

Thank you very much.

 Following are questions and answers posed after the presentation:

MR. NIBLETT: I'm Robin Niblett, Executive Vice President of CSIS.  I think I got chosen for this job because of my British accent.

We have a number of questions coming in.  Perhaps I could do a little bit of culling here and try to pass them over your way.

One of the comments that's often made in people's travels in the Middle East, and it's also been borne out by some opinion surveys, has been differences in attitudes between generations.  When you've traveled in your travels to the Middle East and to the Muslim world, what have you noticed in terms of different approaches between generations in their attitudes to the United States?  Usually you associate youth with thinking good things about the United States.  Is that a pattern that you find around the world, or is it the opposite?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: Well, there must have been five or six key polls in the last couple of months, and we're very glad to get them.  We do our own kind of research.  I'm urging the State Department to do not only what people said, but why they feel this way, which is really a different kind of research and important to do.

And we get mixed reports.  There isn't any question that it's really popular now to be critical and hostile about the United States, and we've heard those reports, and we can corroborate them in many places.  But we've also seen an interesting subgroup of polling where a gentleman -- I think it was from Saudi Arabia - just was frustrated because the young people are "not that interested in foreign affairs" and their ability to criticize the United States is lessening.  And he went on to say that it's obvious that they are influenced by culture because of what they wear and the music they listen to and so on.

I read you those comments; I have many others.  I think that we are seeing a slight light at the end of the tunnel in terms of trying to communicate who we are.  We have miles to go before we have the kind of understanding that would make us feel someone understands the full face of the United States.  When they do, they can criticize.  They can take us apart.  We can be far apart on policy and issues.  We just can't tolerate the misunderstandings, the biases that hurt us and them too.

MR. NIBLETT: The second question refers to the Fulbright program, which has been very successful in building up a huge network of people involved, interested in the United States.  Are you doing any work with those sorts of scholarship organizations?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: You know, coming from the private sector, I was simply stunned at the efficacy and the productivity of the exchange groups.  The Fulbright group is one of the ones that I appreciated so much because, for instance, when we were in an Arab country, the Fulbrighters in that country organized themselves into a business council and, first of all, they were telling us that they evolved as leaders, and we hope there was a connection.  But they also took it upon themselves to be very productive members of their society and create the kind of alumni databank that I would really like to see happen in many more places.  So in spite of our not following them in many cases, they have been leaders and they have encouraged us with this idea.  I think they're going to be our test model for making that happen.

MR. NIBLETT: Another set of questions really references attitudes here in the United States and getting a sense of how important it is for your mission to get a better understanding of the Muslim world here in the United States.  Is that part of your mission at all?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: Well, there are many facets in the United States.  It's pretty awesome to say that you're going to start talking about the values of the United States, because it's complex.  We could disagree on a thousand nuances.  But there are some key underpinnings that we would all agree on.  I think one of the great strengths of this country is that we do agree on a number of central issues, and that kind of coherence internally allows us to take up telling that story.

Muslim Life in America is just one of many stories that I think truly reflect religious tolerance.  If we don't move that story to the capacity for interfaith relationships and the mutual support of people to have a religion, or to have no religion, to practice it in very wonderful and strange ways, then we haven't finished that story.

MR. NIBLETT: We had a question that's linked to that one, which has to do with the kind of phraseology that's used here in the United States by the Administration -- phrases, "crusade", whether one believes one way or the other in terms of Ariel Sharon's role recently in the peace process, but talking of him as a "man of peace." A lot of what is given to domestic audiences in the United States gets played back against the United States internationally.

Is your office integrated in any way in helping craft the message that's played domestically, given its impact abroad?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: I think that word "crusade" has been beaten up enough.  It hasn't been used other than the one time.  And it's true that it was more centered to the United States, but we are all very aware that our words are heard around the world.  That's exactly why we have the most aggressive, sophisticated website -- to get the word out in 36 languages.  So we're not unaware of that.

It's extremely difficult to try to consider every single language, every single nuance, every single dimensions of a case like the Middle East crisis, which each person can feel free to interpret differently.

I think the answer is that President Bush can certainly speak for himself.  Secretary Powell interprets and expands on the most immediate policy statements.  I feel that our government officials are extremely accessible to people in the United States and abroad.  We just made one improvement, I think, recently.  Karen Hughes came to speak at our Public Affairs Symposium, and we mentioned to her that our foreign news reporters have a much harder time of getting interviews and so on.  She moved instantly, so that when there was a meeting in Crawford, Texas, the foreign news reporters finally had their own briefing room, they got a lot of cooperation, and things I think went much better.

Furthermore, Ambassador Chris Ross and I are committed -- he's right here; if you have a question I can't answer, I'm turning it right over -- Ambassador Ross and I are convinced that we need to have a regional media center dedicated to supplying a better dialogue, hammering home the interviews, giving people access to any kinds of dialogue they want, because the ultimate answer is that we're free to debate, we have an open society; let's make sure we provide that for every channel of inquiry.

QUESTION: There have been several questions asked as to how the U.S. government has engaged the Islamic American community in your educational dialogue?  Have you been able to engage them actively in the message you develop and how you put it forward?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: Well, I think, the one I just mentioned is, I thought, a very encouraging sign, that a group of people -- and I understand they're very diverse, and they intend to expand and open the membership widely; the more the better, I think they feel -- is an example of the kind of initiative that's typical of our country, really, of people seizing their own organization and beginning to take positive steps.  We encourage that.  Where we can provide access or unique knowledge that we might have about a country, we will do so.  And I assume that there will be more such groups.

There's never been a time when a key group from the Islamic world has asked to see me -- that I know of -- that we've ever said anything but please come, we need to learn, we need to listen.  And if I don't do it, Ambassador Ross comes in and explains to me we're going to do it.

So I think we have to have exceptional access.  And my impression is, is that a lot of members of the White House receive regular briefings and dialogue in the same way.

QUESTION: This will be the last question, just in terms of where we are right now in our dialogue.  So this will be the last question.

The Muslim world clearly is a huge area.  How are you able to differentiate and tailor your message, both to the countries in the Middle East and even looking more broadly around the world -- how do you develop a nuanced message that takes into account these types of variations, and doesn't just turn this into a dialogue between the West and the Muslim world?

UNDER SECRETARY BEERS: Well, you're absolutely right.  The size of the task, when you first understand it, just about collapses the effort.  And then you go at it again.  Fortunately, we have very talented people in the embassies who keep teaching and guiding us.

We tested this first round of messages -- I didn't show you all of them -- in Egypt and Indonesia, because they have two really different vantage points.  And it changed the way we talked about it, and it doesn't mean that it's all-inclusive.  The answer is, we're going to develop them; we're going to evaluate them; we're going to refine them; and then we're going to try to roll them out in sort of a classic marketing sense.  And we will keep learning.  When we use these kinds of properties and send them out in the world, I hope that we will have a lot of ability to study what we're accomplishing.