What are some of the impressions that people have there of President Obama?
CONGRESSMAN KEITH ELLISON: Obama’s wildly popular in the Middle East. There are bazaar marketplaces called souks, and in nearly every Middle Eastern souk I went to I found Obama T-shirts. Everybody talked about the new mood and atmosphere in the region, and people feel that the United States has made Middle East peace a priority. So there’s a tremendous amount of positive support for President Obama. But there is this other idea, that the signaling that President Obama has done must be met with substantive changes in U.S. policy. That is something we have yet to see happen, and so we have raised expectations. There’s a general feeling that it is now time to start really delivering. ESSENCE.COM: The White House has described the President’s trips to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as an effort to reach out to the “Muslim World.” How do you feel about that term-what does it mean exactly, and doesn’t it lump diverse groups into one bloc? ELLISON: It does, but the fact is, the Muslim world has cert
