For groups committed to that principle, the change in climate feels dramatic. Daisy Khan, co-founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, predicts that a wave of second-generation Muslim-Americans will now enter politics, unlike their cautious, apolitical parents. In Obama’s America, she thinks, the overseas ties of Muslims can help with civic diplomacy.

Well, perhaps not all overseas ties. Parts of the American Muslim world are still in shock over long sentences handed out in May to five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity, on charges of helping Hamas. As a result of the trial, America’s law enforcers have scaled down once-friendly ties with some Muslim-American bodies.

In its choice of Muslim personnel, the Obama administration has artfully sought out people with little involvement in the messy world of institutional Muslim politics. But making easy gains, and dodging controversies, including religious ones, has its limits. Hard choices may lie ahead in the area of religious liberty.

Philosophically, America’s Commission on International Religious Freedom (a bipartisan body that advises Congress and the White House) is in step with the Obama mood. Its latest global report stresses that in many places, Muslims are victims of discrimination, not its perpetrators. Suffering Muslims (be they Uighurs in China or Shias in repressive Sunni states like Saudi Arabia) need America’s support-as part of a foreign policy that favours just, tolerant societies. So the commission believes, and so the Obama people, in theory, say too.

But how far will the president go in scolding states identified by the commission? Its report adds five new countries (including Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan) to the eight already classed as “countries of particular concern” over religious liberty. Among 11 countries placed on the commission’s “watch list” are Afghanistan, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Turkey—and Egypt. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, will meet the commissioners soon, and they will have some hard questions for her.

... contd.