Up until last summer, Rauf was invited by the State Department to engage in public diplomacy work and to share his experience as an American Muslim, making four trips abroad in 10 years. However, his visit to the Gulf countries during the summer of 2010 was his last.

The ninth anniversary of September 11 is being overshadowed by the news of Pastor Terry Jones and his now-suspended plan to burn copies of the Koran at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. Even if the bonfire does not take place, the news of it is tragic for a number of reasons.

The calls by a Florida pastor to burn the Quran, coupled with the controversy over a planned Muslim community center near Ground Zero, pose risks that the United States will be increasingly viewed worldwide as a setting for anti-Muslim sentiment.

The pastor of a small Florida church, under pressure from President Barack Obama and other world leaders, said he is abandoning plans to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The continuing controversy over a proposed Islamic community center and mosque to be built near the site of the former World Trade Center has some in the counterterrorism community worried about the fallout in the Muslim world.

Most Arab columnists agree with the argument that the anti-mosque movement will badly harm Arab and Muslim views of the United States, contra Rashed, but there isn't as much active discussion of it in the forums as you'd expect. That isn't a reason to relax, though.

Across the world, the bruising struggle over an Islamic center near ground zero has elicited some unexpected reactions....For many in Europe...America’s fight over Park51 seems small fry...But others, especially in countries with nothing similar to the constitutional separation of church and state, find it puzzling that there is any controversy at all.

The national debate about building a mosque near Ground Zero in New York is less about our freedom of religion than about the common sense and uncommon courtesy sometimes required to come together as Americans.