For a while, Turkey’s quest for influence, and its country’s apparent success as an affluent and highly functioning Muslim-majority society, seemed to be having the effect that Ankara desired. In a 2011 Brookings Institution poll of the Arab countries, Turkey was ranked first among countries believed to have played a “constructive role” in the Arab Spring.

This pattern of anti-Muslim violence in the wake of extremist attacks has become all too familiar in Britain over the last decade. The public has grappled with angry backlashes to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the London transport bombings of July 7, 2005 and now the murder in Woolwich.

Successful public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world must be firmly grounded in the recognition that Islam is a dominant factor in the daily life of hundreds of millions of people and in the public sphere of many countries.

“The casual visitor to the square in early 2013 might even wonder if SpongeBob has become, like the ubiquitous Che Guevara shirts or the spooky Guy Fawkes masks made popular by the film V for Vendetta, a bizarre transnational pop culture symbol of resistance,” Malsin added. SpongeBob’s images have even become as ever-present as images of revolutionaries who were killed during the uprising, particularly in Cairo, the newspaper reported.

As Barack Obama gave a speech defending the US use of drone attacks abroad, Pakistanis talked back on Twitter. On Thursday, the US president addressed criticism of his administration's use of drones in counterterrorism policy and proposed new policy guidelines for strikes.

The Arab Spring was not about creating utopia, nor indeed quick-fix solutions to anything in particular. It was about articulating the massive problems holding the Arab world back, and putting them out to a global audience.

As Obama pointed out in his speech, drones do an incredibly effective job of killing America's adversaries, do not violate the laws of war, and -- a fact he didn't adduce -- enjoy the overwhelming support of the American people. Obama was reacting to public opinion -- but less in the United States than in Pakistan or Yemen. And the fact that this is so tells us a great deal about the changing face or war, and of statecraft.

The government is at fault for its own negative image in the international press because of its policies in the West Bank, former prime minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday. “I think it is inarguable that Israel’s main problem isn’t public diplomacy; it’s first of all a policy problem,” Olmert said. “We won’t be able to convince the world we’re right unless our reality changes.”