aslam abdullah has joined us. let me just introduce him briefly.ourse you can read his bio in its entirety. i will briefly summarize it. is the editor of the "muslim observer," the director of the islamic society of nevada. he is a trustee to have american federation of muslims. he is also the author of 11 books and over 700 papers and articles. a very prolific writer, obviously. he has spoken off and on on national and local media and his former vice chairman of impact. a long standing association with impact. we would like to welcome you to the panel. we were making remarks about the framework of discussion, whether it makes sense to talk about u.s.-muslim world relations rather than the u.s. relations with specific muslim communities and muslim nations. does that framework makes sense? >> thank you very much. i'm sorry that i was late. there was a show going on that they want me to be there. i decided to come here. when i think that the notion that the u.s. should engage with the muslim world precisely because of 9/11 or because of what happened

later, aslam abdullah will join us. i am going to start off, basically -- the panelists labeled improving u.s.-muslim relations. i looked at that question and said, doesn't even make sense? we can speak of improving u.s.- turkish relations, u.s.-iranian relations, but can we talk about u.s.-muslim relations? who in the muslim world away tried to lead to? are we turn to lead to the government or the massive public opinion? -- are we trying to relate to the garment or the mass of public opinion? >> a few years ago, i was working as a low ranking marine. one of the senior marines had proposed something about a terrorist incident. i said, extremist muslims -- i understand in the discussion we had earlier about how do you label al qaeda and their ilk. i said extremist muslims would probably say this about the event. the senior marine said muslims or extreme muslims? our turkish allies that we just came back from serving in bosnia and the bosnians and the co-starkosavars would probably e extreme muslims. the idea of relating