KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) - A U.S. government-funded television advertising campaign showing American Muslims living and worshipping freely has received bad reviews from Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia, two of its main target audiences.
Broadcast in Malaysia this week and Indonesia last week, the series of short documentaries seeks to dispel any notion that Muslims in the United States are a persecuted minority.
But critics say the ads, funded by the State Department, fail to address the root causes of anti-U.S. sentiment among Muslims, namely Washington's support for Israel, the injustices suffered by Palestinians and the plight of ordinary Iraqis.
"The U.S. is spending millions of dollars to change public opinion in the Muslim world which is against U.S. views," said Ghani Shamsuddin, head of Malaysia's Ulama (Islamic scholars) Association. "But I don't think it will work."
The documentaries profile Muslim Americans such as Lebanese American teacher Rawia Ismail in Toledo, Ohio, and Kashmiri American paramedic Farooq Mohammad of New York City.
Mohammad says that he attends his local mosque and that his colleagues at work are respectful toward his religion.
"It's easy for me to get along with other Americans. I'm from here, I'm hip to the culture... That's the beautiful thing about the United States, that you can be of any faith and practice your faith freely," he added.
U.S. diplomats said the $15 million drive was part of a wider campaign to improve the United States' image in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
"How it treats its Muslims at home is not an issue," said Zulkifli Alwi, a leader of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party.
"The issue is the U.S. administration's overall policy toward the Muslim world. It should go to the roots," he said.
The ads will also run in newspapers in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and in mainly Muslim Malaysia as well as on some pan-Arab television networks during Islam's holy month of Ramadan, which started Wednesday.
Dadi Darmadi, a moderate Muslim intellectual in Indonesia said the campaign reinforced a message that Washington is not an enemy of Islam.
"But it overlooks the fact that there are flaws in the U.S. foreign policy with regards to Muslim countries," said Darmadi, who runs the Center for the Study of Islam and Society in Jakarta.