Others were unconvinced. Iraqi radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr said: "Obama can't change America's policies. . . . The honey talk and stylish political speeches express only one thing, and that is America will follow a different path into subjecting the world to its control and its globalization."
The American president, born of a Muslim father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, insisted that the United States is "not at war with Islam."
More than at any time in the recent past, Obama emphasized his personal roots in the Muslim world. He used his full name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- and spoke fondly of spending part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. 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 crowd responded with its first burst of applause when Obama offered the Arabic greeting of peace. He quoted the Koran and referred to stories familiar to people who grew up in the Islamic tradition.
The speech was not intended to launch policy initiatives. The White House had made it clear that Obama wanted to use the speech to move beyond the West's recent relations with Islam.
"I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear," said Obama, who recalled hearing prayer calls of azan at dawn and dusk while living in Indonesia.
The same principle must apply in reverse, he said. "Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire."
Zafar Jaspal, an international relations analyst at Quaid-i-Azam University in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said, "The key will be if the U.S. begins to see the Muslim world as a partner, and respects the Muslim world's wishes and rules."
Obama did not use the word "terrorism," which many Muslims associate with the U.S. drive for military action in the Muslim world. In a rare step for a U.S. leader, he referred three times to "Palestine."
And analysts said they were struck by his acknowledgment of a U.S. hand in the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953, which still is a source of Iranian anger.
Obama appealed for a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, saying that, just as Israel has a right to exist, Palestinians deserve a state.
