NASA Muslim Outreach: ‘Flawed’

by Tom McGregor

On Tuesday, the former director of NASA described as “deeply flawed” the concept that the space exploration agency’s priority should be outreach to Muslim nations, after Charles Bolden, the current administrator, made an assertion last month in an interview.

Michael Griffin, who served as NASA administrator during the latter half of the Bush administration, told Fox News that, “NASA … represents the best of America. It’s purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity.”

Fox News reports that, “Bolden created a firestorm after telling Al Jazeera last month that President Obama told him before he took the job that he wanted him before he took the job that he wanted him to do three things: inspire children to learn math and science, expand international relationships and ‘perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much dominantly with Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.’”

On Tuesday, White House officials defended Bolden’s statement that part of his mission is to improve relations with Muslim nations, although NASA pushed aside Bolden’s claim that such international diplomacy is Bolden’s “foremost” responsibility.

According to Fox, “Griffin said Thursday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged – but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s ‘fundamental mission’ of space exploration.”

Griffin said, “if by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful. If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”