NASA Chief's Comment Another Stumble For Muslim Outreach
July 6, 2010
| 1:15 PM
The White House's policy of using science to build better relations with Muslim-majority countries took another hit over the weekend, when U.S.-based websites highlighted a statement by NASA administrator Charles Bolden that President Obama wants NASA to help the people in Muslim-majority countries feel good about their ancestors' technological accomplishments.
"Before I became the NASA administrator, he charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering," Bolden told an interviewer at the Al Jazeera TV channel. The interview was taped mid-June during Bolden's visit to Cairo, where he also spoke to an audience at the American University in Cairo.
The administration's science outreach effort is already stymied because of cultural and religious factors in Muslim-majority countries, a panel of White House appointees said at a June 9 event hosted by the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy and the D.C.-based National Academies. "In the Muslim world, education is behind standards. I can say that because it's not sensitive for me," said Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-born chemist at the California Institute of Technology who won a Nobel Prize in 1999. Zewail told National Journal that it will take deep educational reform to establish "rational thinking" as an alternative to the ideas of Islamist political advocates.
In a June 15 speech to the American University in Cairo, Bolden took pains to cite technical accomplishments by Egyptians. He cited research conducted by Zewail and another Egyptian-born scientist in the United States, described how NASA-generated satellite data is used in some Egyptians schools as a teaching aid, and talked about the pyramids, which were constructed several thousand years ago. "It is humbling... to be here in the shadow of the Cairo Citadel and the Great Pyramid at Giza and speak of the engineering wonders of the world," he said. "These monuments are a great testament to the vitality of the Egyptian culture and the strong skills of its people, and a unique vantage point for considering the potential for U.S.-Egyptian cooperation in the frontiers of space." Bolden did not mention that the pyramids were constructed roughly 5,000 years ago, long before Islam was brought to multi-religious Egypt by a Muslim army 1,300 years ago.
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