Whatever happens in tomorrow’s primaries, one of the Catholic Church’s top Islam experts tells NCR‘s John Allen that Barack Obama has already changed attitudes toward the U.S. in the Muslim world:

“I was just in Indonesia, and whenever people found out I was an American, they began shouting, ‘Barak Obama! Barak Obama!'” [the Rev. Thomas] Michel said. He compared that to his experience 40 years ago of entering Palestinian refugee camps and seeing pictures of Egyptian President Gamal Abdle Nasser on one wall and John F. Kennedy on another.

“Kennedy represented something positive to them,” Michel said. “There’s a longing to be able to support the American ideal of freedom and respect for the rights of persons, but that has been blasted in the last eight years. America is now seen as a global oppressor.”

Whatever one makes of the merits of that perception, of course, it’s still interesting as a barometer of global attitudes. In that context, Michel predicted that Obama would have a special appeal.

“Throughout the Third World, and especially in the Muslim world, there’s a feeling that the world has been run so long by white males-from their point of view, badly-that somebody different like Obama would be welcome. My sense is that they’d bend over backwards to give him a break.”