Senator John Kerry is holding hearings on "Engaging with Muslim Communities around the World" today at the Senate. I wholeheartedly support initiatives like these and I command the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee for taking such an important step. I hope, however, this initiative will be different from the ill-conceived public diplomacy of the Bush administration which produced media fiascos like Radio Sawa in the Arab world, Radio Farda in Iran, Hi Magazine in the Middle East, and the embattled Arabic Al-Hurra news channel . This top-down approach to diplomacy through the old media model of I-report-you read-watch and listen is ill-fated from the start. Judging from the panel (the director of the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute and the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), I don't see anybody who could argue for the important role a better deployment of the media, including social networks, can play in this effort.

The panelists invited are quite respected experts and will most certainly provide some thoughtful recommendations to better engage the complex and diverse Muslim communities across the world, but it's not because the media initiatives of the Broadcasting Board of Governors- the agency responsible for all government-funded international broadcasting- were so shortsighted during the Bush administration that we should diminish the role of the media in public diplomacy. 

It's a good sign that a sociologist of religion and a community organizer of youth interfaith dialogue like Eboo Patel was invited to the hearings. We need more people like him who work from the ground up with Muslim communities to influence public policy. If the US wishes to improve its image in the Muslim world, it needs to engage individuals who are making great strides using alternative media platforms to create new communities. It's rather curious that nobody with some media expertise or some of the new media entrepreneurs who were part of the recent Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow Conference were invited.