When Culture’s Soft Power Confronts Hard Limits

Over the past year, the Cedar Cultural Center has joined a growing list of groups and organizations using music-based outreach programs to Muslim communities to increase cultural understanding and counter extremist influences. Or at least, that’s what they’re trying to do. The problem is that in a time when cultural understanding is more critical than ever before, it’s become an uphill battle for artists from Islamic countries to obtain permission to travel to the United States.