Obama a friend of Muslims: Envoy

PATNA: The perception of Muslims across the world about the US has changed ever since Barack Obama became the US president. So feels Rashad Hussain, Obama's special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
"Everywhere I went, I am told President Obama represents a welcome change and the US is moving in right direction,'' Hussain told TOI in an interview on Saturday. The 31-year-old Obama envoy is on a two-day visit to Patna which, incidentally, is his ancestral place.
"Obama is visiting India in November.The President has special interest in the sub-continent and he is a fan of great Urdu poet Allama Iqbal. As a student, he shared a room with a Pakistani,'' said Hussain whose job as Obama envoy is to "develop and expand the partnership that the US has pursued with Muslims around the world''.
Muslims trusted President Obama when he unveiled his stand on terrorism in Cairo last year, said Hussain who was associated with the team that drafted the historic speech of the US president. "President Obama's stand is that terrorism has no religion and that Islam rejects terrorism and also rejects what happened on 9/11. He views people around the world as human beings and is concerned about their education, health, economy and job. His philosophy is to look at people as human beings not as Muslims or Hindus or Christians,'' Hussain said.
Hussain's parents, who lived at Dariyapur in Patna's Sabzibagh locality, migrated to America in 1969. He was born in Wyoming and brought up in Plano, Texas, where his parents reside. His father Mohammad Hussain is a retired mining engineer and mother Ruqayya a physician. He is married to Isra Bhatty, whose family belongs to Pakistan.
A bearded Hussain is also a hafiz, a person who has memorised the Quran. On a few occasions, he led `tarawih', the special prayer offered during the holy month of Ramazan. "Several Indian and Pakistani boys in the US are a hafiz,'' he said and added the US has no plan to ban the use of `hijab', or veil, by the Muslim women living there.
Asked about a proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York and its opposition from some quarters, Hussain quoted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as having said, "I expect the community centre and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighbourhood and the entire lower Manhattan''.
After his week-long visit to India, Hussain will return to Washington next week.