Barack Hussein Obama and the Muslim World

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In his first presidential visit to a Muslim country today, Barack Hussein Obama addressed a special session of the Turkish parliament. But his Muslim audience was much bigger than that. He told the parliament that the US “is not and will never be at war with Islam.” He invoked his Muslim father and his residence in a Muslim country, and called Turkey’s secular democracy a model for the 21st Century. We talk about Turkey’s importance to the US and the Western countries and about the so-called “soft” but conservative religious conversion of Islamic youth worldwide.

Credits

Guests:

  • Semih Idiz - Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse - @semihidiz
  • Bulent Aliriza - Director of the Turkey Project, Center for International and Strategic Studies
  • Robin Wright - contributing writer at The New Yorker magazine, and a joint fellow at U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center - @wrightr
  • Navtej Dhillon - Fellow, Brookings Institution

Host:

Warren Olney

Producer:

Frances Anderton