Jordan's Queen Rania receives YouTube's first Visionary Award

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan's Queen Rania has received YouTube's first Visionary Award for a daily video Webcast and blog in which she sought to challenge stereotypes of the Arab and Muslim world and encourage dialogue across cultures.

Accepting the award in a YouTube clip posted Saturday, Rania listed 10 reasons for her five-month YouTube series in a spoof of the top 10 list segment on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman."

Among her reasons were: "Because anything Queen Elizabeth can do, I can do better" and "I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player."

More seriously, Rania has said she wants people to "know the real Arab world ... unedited, unscripted and unfiltered."

YouTube created the Visionary Award to recognize people who use the video sharing Web site as a platform for positive social change.

In the series, which ran from March to August, the media savvy queen and rights advocate invited viewers to share their opinions of the Middle East and talk about stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.

The series began at a time when Muslim sentiment was stirred by an Internet film criticizing the Quran produced by an anti-immigrant politician in the Netherlands. It also followed the outrage over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in newspapers in Europe.

Among her advocacy work, the wife of Jordan's King Abdullah has promoted education, micro-credit financing and anti-poverty campaigns.