In a video posted on the White House website, President Obama wished Muslims around the world "Ramadan Kareem" (roughly translated as "happy Ramadan") at the start of the Muslim holy month, says the Wall Street Journal. The President's Ramadan greeting is his latest attempt to reach out to the Muslim world, which originally began with a video greeting to Iranians on Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, and continued with his June speech in Cairo.

Obama stated that he hoped to reiterate his "commitment to a new beginning between America and Muslims around the world," the Wall Street Journal continues. He said that his administration is working to bring peace to the Middle East and Central Asia by ending the war in Iraq, "isolating violent extremists" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and backing a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute.

"All of these efforts are a part of America's commitment to engage Muslims and Muslim-majority nations on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect," Obama affirms. The message is translated into thirteen languages on the White House's website.

Obama's "unyielding support for a two-state solution that recognizes the rights of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security" was made during a standoff largely centered on the White House's demand for a settlement freeze by Israel, as noted by the Wall Street Journal.

Sultan Knish of Right Side News accused Obama of being "unyielding" against Israel and pro-Israel Jews and blamed him for "greeting Ramadan with a promise to support Palestinian Arab terrorism and oppress Israel."

While more than a billion Muslims devote themselves to prayer, fasting, and charity during Ramadan, a small minority "escalate violence in the name of jihad," says the National Post. In the weeks before Ramadan, hundreds of Muslims have been murdered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Yemen and Somalia.

Car bombs in Iraq killed 96 and injured 536; suicide bombings at police posts in Chechnya killed 25 and injured 160. In Somalia, a Ramadan offensive launched by Islamist rebels against African Union peacekeepers resulted in the deaths of 22 people.

The National Post also quotes Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan's Swat Valley, who claims his group is preparing a military offensive to take place during Ramadan. "The Taliban will intensify attacks," he said. "It won't be long until they gain control of entire Swat Valley. We have a large number of suicide bombers and now is the time to use them."

In preparation for the seasonal increase in violence during the Muslim holy month, governments have stepped up combat efforts. Police in Kuwait arrested six suspected terrorists, who they say planned to attack Camp Arifjan, home to 15,000 US troops. In Bangladesh, a public awareness campaign is set to launch during Ramadan to counter calls for violent jihad.

Islamist websites are currently filled with rumors of a new Ramadan message from Osama bin Laden. In the past, Al-Qaeda has called for Ramadan terror campaigns "to come closer to Allah through the blood of infidels." Yet many Muslims reject such extremists and condemn the holy month as a justification for violence.

"Ramadan is about returning to the fountain of truth and drinking from it as deeply as possible," Muqtedar Khan, director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, writes to the National Post.

Obama's Ramadan greeting follows the release of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, from imprisonment in Scotland. Dean Nelson, for the Telegraph, supports the "magnanimous" decision to release the dying man on compassionate grounds. Nelson calls the statements by Obama's FBI director, who said Scotland had given comfort to terrorists' insulted victims, "vindictive."

"By showing compassion for a man who did not deserve it, Scotland has deployed a weapon America does not appear to have in its arsenal, and fired it into the heart of the Muslim world in its holiest month ... Now, as Muslims throughout [sic] the world look into their hearts, tiny Scotland has invited America too to find its own," Nelson wrote.

According to President Obama's under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, Judith McHale, the writer had actually declared that Muslims hate America because they perceived the war on terror as a war on Muslims. It killed thousands of innocent Iraqis for weapons of mass destruction which did not exist, and that the United States preached democracy and transparent government, but supports corrupt dictators and rulers overseas.