CAIRO — It is difficult to overstate the anticipation awaiting Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world Thursday. The prospect of an American president who represents a break from the recent past journeying to Cairo has stirred optimism in a region accustomed to viewing U.S. power with hostility.
White House advisors have warned that few detailed proposals will be forthcoming when Obama comes to this ancient city of mosques. But the president must still navigate sensitive political and diplomatic ground.
To build support among moderate Muslims, he needs to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long the prime grievance in the Arab world. Obama will also be seeking to enlist Muslim support in countering terrorism and show he is advancing political freedom and human rights in the repressive Arab regimes of U.S. allies.
He must convince a kaleidoscopic audience listening with varied passions and agendas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia that the United States can be a friend. And he must do so with one eye fixed warily on critics back home, whose antennae seek any sign that Obama's overture to the world's 1 billion Muslims is tantamount to American weakness.
There are no plans to announce a comprehensive Middle East peace proposal, but Obama's eloquence and telegenic gifts may lose resonance here if he does not articulate at least an overall strategy for delivering a Palestinian homeland. This dream unifies the Muslim world, but its achievement has bedeviled many U.S. presidents. Obama will quickly learn that it is time, in the Muslim view, for more than pretty words about respect for people of the region.
"So far people think he's too good to be true, but what will he pursue when things get tough?" said Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. "He has to deliver. It won't be enough to simply say, 'I respect you.' He will have to deal with the Muslim world's issues. . . . Expectations are high, but that's a good problem."
Many Arabs regard Obama as the ideal American leader to stem the bitterness between Islam and Washington that flared after Sept. 11, 2001, and burned through the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's war on terrorism. He's a Christian born of a Muslim father who supports U.S. allies while inspiring hope among democracy activists.
His is a mystique of personality and power that is rarely glimpsed among the Middle East's own politicians. And it helps set expectations exceedingly high.
