Reporting from Cairo and Washington — President Obama, calling for "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," said in a long-promised and widely watched address from Cairo today that the "cycle of suspicion and discord must end."
Speaking before an audience of 3,000 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge to travel to the Muslim world, still smarting over the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. He called for a renewed drive to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problems and acknowledged the importance of Iran, whose nuclear ambitions are of concern to the West.
"We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world -- tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate," Obama said in the address that was ripe with religious references, drawing from Islam, Judaism and Christianity, which all trace their roots in the Mideast.
"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect," he said. "America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition."
"This cycle of suspicion and discord must end," he said.
That fear and mistrust stem from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, carried out by "violent extremists," Obama said. "Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it," the president told a theater audience that frequently applauded his repeated appeals for mutual understanding.
The American president, born of a Muslim father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas and raised for part of his childhood in Indonesia, insisted that the United States is "not at war with Islam." The readiness of the U.S. to fulfill its guiding principles, he said, is demonstrated by the fact that "an African American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected president."
The speech contained no policy initiatives, but it was not designed to do so. The White House had made it clear in recent days that Obama wanted to bring a new spirit to the Middle East debate and repair the hostile feelings with which Muslims viewed the U.S. in recent years.
"I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear," said the president, who recalled hearing prayer calls of "azaan" at dawn and dusk while living in Indonesia as a boy.
