President Barack Obama will offer a "personal commitment" to bridge differences between the United States and Muslims in a eagerly anticipated speech in Egypt this week.
The address at the University of Cairo on Thursday is the centrepiece of Mr Obama's second overseas tour as president. The trip begins in Saudi Arabia and includes stops at a former concentration camp in Germany and ceremonies in Normandy to mark the D-Day anniversary.
Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said the president would "review particular issues of concern, such as violent extremism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and "discuss new areas for partnership".
"The speech will outline his personal commitment to engagement, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect," he said.
It is intended to be the president's most striking attempt – delivered in the heart of an Arab capital – to reassure Muslims of American goodwill and to repair the damage done to his country's reputation by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the controversial tactics of George W Bush's "war on terror".
The effort started at Mr Obama's inauguration and continued in Istanbul, when he said Islam had nothing to fear from the West.
The president, whose middle name is Hussein, is likely to play up his Muslim associations, having downplayed them for domestic consumption.
Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, said that Mr Obama had "experienced Islam on three continents before he has been able to visit the heart of the Islamic world".
He cited the president's "upbringing" in Indonesia, where he spent four years as a child, and how Muslim Americans were "a key part of Illinois and Chicago", Mr Obama's base.
The president will also hold a meeting with Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, and visit a mosque, advisers said.
Mr McDonough said the president would probably stress how "many of the advances that come out of the Muslim world" had benefited Americans.
However, Mr Obama has faced criticism that his efforts to mend fences have so far yielded few results.
His conciliation towards Iran has yet to be reciprocated, while the new Right-wing Israeli government has ignored demands to stop Jewish settlement-building in the Palestinian West Bank. A discreet approach to the North Koreans was rebuffed with a second nuclear weapons test.
Ed Royce, the top Republican congressman on the house foreign affairs committee, said: "It's more important what countries do than what they say, and the Obama administration has overestimated the importance of being liked."
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Barack Obama extends hand of friendship to Muslim world
President Obama will seek to forge a new American relationship with the Muslim world this week during a long-awaited speech in Egypt in which he will heap praise on Islamic culture and give a personal commitment to a new era of co-operation.
The address in Cairo will harness Mr Obama’s own ancestral ties to the religion as he begins the daunting task of reducing the deep mistrust of America felt by many of the world’s one billion Muslims.
The speech will be rich in Mr Obama’s lofty rhetoric but at its core it is guided by a hard-headed, hugely ambitious foreign policy objective: to mobilise support in the Muslim world to help him to achieve peace in the Middle East and an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
The choice of Egypt is also significant. It has dismayed the country’s dissidents who oppose the autocratic and increasingly unpopular rule of President Mubarak. It reflects Mr Obama’s break with George W. Bush’s “democracy agenda” as he attempts to co-opt moderate Sunni Arab states — even undemocratic ones — against Iran, Islamic terrorism and into greater co-operation with Israel.
White House aides stressed that Mr Obama will be particularly focused on the Muslim world’s youth. “Egypt is, like much of the Muslim world, a young country with a burgeoning younger population that the President looks very much forward to engaging directly in his speech,” said Denis McDonough, Mr Obama’s Deputy National Security Director.
Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama’s press secretary, said that the President “will outline his personal commitment to engagement, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. He will discuss how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them.”
Asked if Mr Obama would meet the Egyptian Opposition, Mr McDonough said that the “full range of political actors in Egypt” had been invited to the speech, which will be delivered at the University of Cairo and co-hosted by al-Azhar University, an ancient centre of Islamic scholarship.
Mr Obama, whose Kenyan father was Muslim, lived for several years as a child in predominately-Muslim Indonesia. He pledged during his presidential campaign to improve relations with Muslims after the hostility caused by events such as the Iraq war and the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal.
White House aides warned that the speech will contain few detailed policy prescriptions for the region. Yet they hope that the simple fact of a black American President with a middle name of Hussein, pledging respect for Islam in a leading Arab country, will generate excitement, and less cynicism, in the Muslim world.
The speech is the latest move by Mr Obama to improve America’s standing with Muslims. He delivered a video message to the Iranian people earlier this year and reassured Muslims that the US was not at war with Islam during a speech inside the Turkish parliament. Thursday’s Cairo address is part of a broader itinerary this week. Mr Obama begins his fourth trip abroad as President with a stop on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia.
He ends the trip in France to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, where Gordon Brown and President Sarkozy will also give speeches.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
This is akin to George Bush delivering a speech on diplomacy to a conference of pacifists. He has been in the White House since January 20th, and even though admittedly that is quite ephemeral, surely he had the ability to take some concrete steps towards placating the apprehensions of the Muslim world, especially pertaining to the Palestinian issue.
Inviting Netanyahu and Abbas to Washington, without threatening even nominally to curtail US assistance to israel unless in reverses its policies on settlements, check points, the seige on Gaza and its unhindered extrajudicial killings and arrests of Palestinians.
No one will really be surprised if he steps up to deliver another rousing piece of oratory devoid of any real committment to peace.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Barack Obama says US must lead by example
President Barack Obama has stated that the United States should not lecture other countries on good governance, arguing that it should lead by example to encourage the development of "universal principles" such as freedom of speech and worship.
Speaking on the eve of a major speech in Cairo designed to build bridges with the Muslim world, the US president said that closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba was essential to demonstrate that the US remained true to the values it espoused.
"The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture," he told the BBC.
"Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion - those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted on these countries, but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity," he added.
As he has prepared to travel to Saudi Arabia and then Egypt, critics have asked if the president has placed enough emphasis on encouraging the advance of democracy and liberty in the Arab world and elsewhere, an agenda that inspired his predecessor George W Bush in the first phase of his presidency.
Mr Obama said: "The United States' job is not to lecture, but to encourage, to lift up what we consider to be the values that ultimately will work not just for our country, but for the - the aspirations of a lot of people."
Aware of criticism from some Republicans that he risks surrendering America's global leadership, he added: "I think the thing that we can do most importantly is serve as a good role model."
He resisted the characterisation of his speech as an "apology" for the Bush era, but admitted that no single speech could bring rapid change.
"There are no silver bullets. There are very real policy issues that have to be worked through that are difficult," said Mr Obama, who departs on Tuesday for Riyadh and will speak at Cairo University on Thursday.
Mr Obama insisted that despite early resistance to its call for compromise from the new Right-wing coalition in Israel peace was attainable.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Obama's 'I'm not Bush' tour of the Middle East
As he sets off for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the President is under pressure to make good his pledge to mend a fractured relationship.
President Barack Obama risks being tripped by over-inflated expectations as he departs Washington tonight for a tour that starts with talks with King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia tomorrow but will be dominated by his long-advertised address to the Muslim world in Egypt on Thursday.
It is Mr Obama's second major trans-Atlantic foray, following his visits to the G20 and Nato summits in April. As well as the Middle East, he will dip once more into European diplomacy, visiting the former concentration camp at Buchenwald in Germany and attending weekend ceremonies to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Beyond the pageantry, he is due to hold private bilateral talks with the leaders of France and Germany.
But it is at Cairo University that Mr Obama, while blessed with undoubted rhetorical skills, faces the biggest challenges. He first promised all the way back in 2007 to deliver an address to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims if he were to become President. This will be that moment, even though he gave something of a preview when he spoke of a new era of "mutual respect" between Muslims and the US in Istanbul at the end of his last trip.
Aides have been working to downplay expectations, insisting that the speech will include no new concrete initiatives and will be more general in nature. "I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world," Mr Obama said last week after meeting the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Washington.
This all on its own may disappoint Muslims in the Arab world and beyond, who are looking for evidence of real change from an America that many grew to despise during the Bush years, when its military invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and was exposed for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
The President is certain to try to separate himself from George Bush, if only by stressing his own personal connections to the Islamic world, such as having people of the Muslim faith in his own family, including his late father from Kenya, and spending part of his childhood in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world.
But in Cairo, where an extraordinary security clampdown is taking place ahead of his visit, Mr Obama will find himself pursuing several goals at once. His audience will want to hear first what he can do to revive still-stalled progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Imparting new momentum towards attaining a two-state solution will be the focus of his talks tomorrow in Riyadh as they were at meetings with regional leaders including the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Abbas at the White House in recent weeks.
But Mr Obama will also be seeking a regional consensus in the Middle East on dealing with the nuclear ambitions of Iran and countering the threat of extremist terrorism within groups like the Taliban and al-Qa'ida.
The President also faces dilemmas born of his decision to deliver the speech in Cairo, which is historically the cradle of Islamic intellectual thought. He will be aware of the record of his host, President Hosni Mubarak, in repressing political freedoms during the 28 years of his rule.
The White House this week said that among those invited to attend his speech will be "political actors" in Egypt, a list that is likely to include activists who are opposed to President Mubarak's regime.
The danger that Mr Obama will disappoint is widely recognised. "The best he could hope to accomplish is to move Arab public opinion about the United States and make it easier for their governments to work with Washington. We need it for our general influence in the area," noted Elliott Abrams, from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Handicapping Mr Obama will be the absence of any real evidence that he is succeeding in moving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward. He has notably failed, for example, to persuade Israel to stop construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank, even after the glad-handing with Mr Netanyahu at the White House.
"How the United States addresses the conflict is how citizens of the region are likely to regard the United States," said Steve Grand, an expert on US-Islamic relations at the Brookings Institution. Mr Obama, he went on, "has been great at a rhetorical level, but he has to provide details about what the United States is going to concretely do to reach out to the Muslim world."
The security apparatus of Egypt is on high alert. To prepare for Thursday's visit by Mr Obama, it has conducted a huge security sweep of the streets that the motorcade will travel on the way to the university campus.
"It's a massive security operation, the biggest we have seen yet," a security official in Egypt said yesterday. Hundreds of students have also been rounded up for questioning ahead of the speech.
Since taking office, Mr Obama has taken steps designed to ease suspicions of the US in the Muslim world, including his order on his first day in office to close the Guantanamo complex within one year.
The first television interview he gave after taking office was to the Arab-language network Al-Arabiya. He recorded a video message speaking directly to the Iranian people to mark Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, and has made overtures to the regime in Tehran about improving relations and ending the nuclear stand-off.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Comment by Tariq Ramadan:
Action must follow Obama's words
Obama's speech to Muslims will mean little if its symbolism is not followed up by concrete measures to restore trust.
The relationship between the United States and Muslims has been so damaged after eight years of the Bush administration that the whole world is now wondering: what is Barack Obama going to say to Muslims? What should he say to restore confidence and trust?
First it's necessary to analyse the main causes of the deep mistrust we find today, not only in Muslim majority countries, but among African, Asian and western Muslims as well. For decades, and especially since the 11 September 2001, Muslims around the world have been getting messages from the US that are disturbing in both their substance and their form.
The former president, George W Bush, was perceived as aggressive, often arrogant, narrow-minded and even deaf when he had to tackle Islamic issues and matters related to Muslim majority countries or the Middle East. Beyond his words of respect, Muslims always kept in mind his first spontaneous religious references to a "crusade" and the "axis of evil". The "war on terror", the bombing of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the extraordinary renditions and the evidence of torture that came to light have had a cumulative effect in testifying that Muslims' lives and dignity seemed to be of almost no value. Beyond Bush's rhetoric, his administration showed neither respect nor any sense of justice towards Muslims, and its blind and unilateral support of Israel added to this testimony.
Barack Obama has this legacy to reverse. In talking to the Muslims, he should talk to the US and the west as well, for the scars of mistrust are deep. Obama has been very smart and cautious in delivering his political messages during the first months of his presidency. He repeatedly expressed his respect towards Islam and Muslims, announcing the closure of Guantanamo and cessation of torture and even becoming tougher towards the Israeli government regarding settlements. These are positive steps one should not deny.
Yet, symbolic acts and speeches are not enough. What we expect from the new president is effective and necessary action as well as a change in attitude. Humility is a key factor. In our global age, the United States might still be the most powerful nation in the world, but it does not have the monopoly on what is good and right. Being open to the world starts with being open to all civilisations and by acknowledging the potential positive contribution of every religion and culture. Islam is a great civilisation and Barack Obama should bring a message of true and deep respect by announcing that we all have to learn from each other and that he will commit himself to spreading knowledge of cultural and religious diversity in the United States itself. Humility means we all have to learn from one another and America should be ready to learn from Islam and Muslims as well as from the Hindus or the Buddhists. Paradoxically, how Obama intends to deal with education and religious diversity at home will be the true indicator of his real policy towards Islam and Muslims in the world.
No civilisation can claim to have a monopoly on universal values and no one can claim to be always faithful to his own values. President Obama must stress the ideal values and human rights the United States stands for but he has also to acknowledge mistakes, failures and contradictions when it comes to their implementation. Lack of consistency is a weakness shared by all nations. The best way for the president to be heard when he calls for human rights and democratisation and announces the start of a new era in relations with Muslims would be to start by being constructively self-critical and acknowledging that the US can and will do much better in respecting the values it stands for. It should do so by implementing just policies towards the Muslim world and poor countries. This humble attitude, based on the imperative duty of consistency, is not a position of weakness but the exact opposite: in this way, Obama can remind leaders as well as ordinary Muslims of their own inconsistencies and duties. Only a consistent and self-critical US president can remind Muslims that they have to act against corruption, extremism, dictatorships, lack of educational policies, discrimination towards women and poor people and be heard with a minimum of trust.
Muslims are waiting for action and they know from experience (with the US as well as with their own governments) that politicians are good at words. Barack Obama has a very special status today in the world and especially in the Muslim world. He is one of the only US presidents who has had both the background and the capacity to be more than simply a symbol spreading beautiful words. It would be sad to lose this historic opportunity and one must hope he has a vision and an efficient strategy for his country and the world. On domestic issues, when it comes to discrimination, security, immigration and equal opportunities, Barack Obama must help us to forget that he is African-American by promoting promote equal rights and justice. At the international level he should help us forget that his father was a Muslim by refusing to be shy or apologetic and respecting the rights of both individuals and populations in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The message he is to send to Muslims should come from a president positioning himself beyond specific colour and religious belonging with humility, consistency and respect. While delivering his speech he should make it clear that after many years of deafness in Washington, he has begun to listen.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Salaam,
Every new US president comes up with a "new plan" for this region though it is not new the tactics simply change. He will not give this region back its rights because that is against Israeli interest.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
In out ear, and out the other.
Personally, I think the zionists (who obviously control America) helped get Barack to the presidency so it can set a precedent for them. It'll make it easier for a Jew to become president since an African-American already was one. Kind of like, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
He doesn't care about the Muslims, he only wants to change the image of America in the eyes of the rest of the world. Because of Bush everyone thinks Americans are: dumb, fat and bigots who have an extreme dislike for Muslims.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
Obama and the current Israeli government do not see eye to eye on much at all. Obama has called for an end to settlements and Netanyahu supports them, for example. That, however, doesn't mean the U.S. and Israel will or should become enemies. That wouldn't help anyone. Especially not the Palestinians.
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
I dont trust him one bit.
How can he deliver such a speech when he is spreading wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not to mention there are still troops in Iraq.
A two-state solution is not in the interest of the zionists. Actions speak louder than words. I've had enough of Obama's fancy oratories.
Peace
Allah never changes a Blessing that He has bestowed upon a nation until they first change themselves. And, certainly, God it is Who is Hearer, Knower. -The Holy Quran 8:53
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Serve Allah by serving humanity.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
Obama and the current Israeli government do not see eye to eye on much at all. Obama has called for an end to settlements and Netanyahu supports them, for example. That, however, doesn't mean the U.S. and Israel will or should become enemies. That wouldn't help anyone. Especially not the Palestinians.
But the fact is that Isarel cannot do without you so if the US took a tougher stance on them, they'd eventually have to obey.
Re: Barack Obama will pledge to heal rift with Islam
salaam
lets see how Obama lives up to his words.
Do you think the pious don't sin?
They merely:
Veiled themselves and didn't flaunt it
Sought forgiveness and didn't persist
Took ownership of it and don't justify it
And acted with excellence after they had erred - Ibn al-Qayyim
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So, you don't at the least have any enthusiasm that he is not going to use misleading rhetoric to damage the image of Islam?
عليكم
In out ear, and out the other. 
I quite like it.
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