As President Obama noted, “change cannot happen overnight.” But his speech Thursday at Cairo University helped improve perceptions of the United States among many Muslims, which is a good start. Obama offered a balanced, respectful assessment of the past and current challenges, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he called for a “a new beginning” based upon “mutual interest and mutual respect.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran proclaimed before the speech began that the people of the Muslim world “hate America from the bottom of their heart.” But the reaction of much of the public who actually heard the speech was positive and offered hope that a new beginning might be possible.
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47 Comments
Opinions in the Muslim world on not based on speeches from infidels. I can well imagine that those commenting positively on O’Bama’s speech will get a tongue lashing from their Imams and Clerics setting them back to Islamic standards.
Responses from translators was very positive as they were pleased to be able to translate a speech from a President who can talk clearly.
Since when do students in Egypt speak for radicals living in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan?
I’m sure there are many civilized persons in the Muslim world. They have not been nor remain the problem in the region.
Mideast Leaders Impressed, Waiting for Action on Obama Speech
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525138,00.html
No schit. The man gives a good speech. Action isn’t his strong suit.
Germany seems to think O’Bama is full of schitt….so do I.
DE SENO: Obama’s Christian-Muslim Double Standard: Our First Dhimmi President
For Americans this appears to be at best an incredibly bad choice of rhetoric or at worst the manifestation of a prejudice hidden in Obama, finally making its way out.
To Muslims though, it has a much deeper meaning tied to the concept of “Dhimmi,” the subjugation of other religions to Islam. I’ll define that in more detail at the end of this column, but first let’s examine the proof that Obama is diminishing Christians while inflating Muslims.
It started in a speech he gave in 2007 when he stated, “Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation.” At that same speech he criticized Christian leaders, claiming they have used their religion for political purposes.
I guess he thinks “Jihad” is a Christian word.
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/06/05/obama%E2%80%99s-christian-muslim-double-standard-our-first-dhimmi-president/
To further diminish American Christianity and inflate Muslim presence here, on June 1st President Obama told French television, “If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” In his speech in Cairo today, he put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million.
According to the CIA World Factbook, there are only 1.8 million Muslims here. President Einstein miscalculated by almost 400%.
-Same Link as Above
Obama’s trying to sweet talk the Muslim world. Come on. That’s gotta be difficult. I imagine the level of difficulty has to be up there, with trying to seduce a Nun at her place of worship.
“Barnie” imagines –
“…the level of difficulty has to be up there, with trying to seduce a Nun at her place of worship.”
So there’s this old joke.
A young naive priest hears confession for the first time in a small rural parish and three guys in succession come in and admit to “Going to town for a a Bl0w JOb.”
“A ‘Bl0W J0b?” asks the priest.
“Yeah, father. For twenty bucks.”
The poor priest has no idea what they’re talking about so he later asks the parish’s Mother Superior, “What’s a Bl0W J0b?”
She says: “Twenty bucks, same as in town.”
(I’ll be here all week. Tip the veal and try your waitress.)
Unfortunately Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a blanket statement about all Muslim’s. That doesn’t upset me though. What upsets me is that American’s lack the critical thinking skills to see what garbage the statement is to begin with.
Even though I am not an Obama fan, and certainly NOT a socialist democrat, it would be stupid to not HOPE the presidents words lead to peace in the middleeast – and less hatred toward Americans.
I am not confident the words of the One will lead to less violence against us.
“What upsets me is that American’s lack the critical thinking skills to see what garbage the statement is to begin with.”
And also for Muslims around the world. I cannot believe that human beings would want their minds and beliefs controlled by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Being told what to think is hard on all of us.
I doubt Obama pulls our troops out of the middle east though.
Ironically, that is why they hate us. It is a vicious circle that is distorted to most Americans because of propaganda.
“American_Way” trolls –
“Being told what to think is hard on all of us.”
You’re just itching for a “ditto-head” response, aren’tca?
Or typical “Boxlock20″ or “Regular” snicker (a la Beavis and Butthead) along the lines of “Heh-heh-heh. He said ‘hard on.” Heh-heh.”
You CONs are really amazing sometimes.
Just when you think no one could get any stupider, you come though and prove us wrong.
I’ll be back later.
I’m gonna go out and celebrate National Donut Day.
Monkeyhawk, do I detect anger? You seem very angry this morning.
You sure got a lot out of my one-liner heh?
Eating is sometimes what people do when they are upset or frustrated.
But eat a donut for me too. Glazed or cake please.
Everyone knows that America can easily achieve a short lived peace by abandoning Israel.
That is all the muslims want. Until they decide they have not been given enough.
Bye bye Israel. Going to be a blow to the Christian Jews organization and for getting a good rapture, but peace comes at a price.
#
Mr_Kia
Posted June 5, 2009 at 8:11 am | Permalink
Since when do students in Egypt speak for radicals living in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan?
I’m sure there are many civilized persons in the Muslim world. They have not been nor remain the problem in the region.
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I think you are misunderstanding who President Obama’s intended audience for this speech was. It wasn’t radicals living in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It wasn’t the leadership in Iran. It wasn’t the radical leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.
You’re on the right track when you say that there are many civilized people in the Muslim world. The vast majority of Muslims don’t want suicide bombers in their neighborhoods anymore than you or I would.
In our own country there are many who feel that our government doesn’t reflect their views or values. I read their posts on WE Blog everyday. Is it really so hard to imagine that there are Muslims who don’t hold the same views as their governments, especially in countries where they have little to no say in who their government leaders are?
President Obama’s intended audience was the vast majority of Muslim people who basically want the same things out of life that most of us do. They want a safe place to live, work, and raise their kids and they want a decent future for their kids.
President Obama is trying to convince these people that the current path and the current leadership in their part of the world only leads to more death, destruction, and misery. He’s trying to drive a wedge between the average Muslim and the radicals when recently, the actions of the United States have been driving average Muslims towards the radicals.
No rational person straps on a suicide vest or indoctrinates their children into a cult of hatred when a better alternative exists.
The coward hiding in the caves recruits/indoctrinates (guess who?) Muslim students and other gullible youngsters to strap on the vest!
Repubs have a problem with the whole ‘battle for hearts and minds’ concept, their response is always ‘get a bigger missile.
We’ve got to educate them not to ‘hate our freedoms’.
ANTI
Posted June 5, 2009 at 9:35 am | Permalink
In his speech in Cairo today, he put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million.
According to the CIA World Factbook, there are only 1.8 million Muslims here. President Einstein miscalculated by almost 400%.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I’m not following you’re math. Just the other day you posted that there were approximately 4.1 million Muslims in the United States. If Obama says there are 7 million, how is that a miscalculation of 400%?
Wouldn’t a miscalculation of 400% be over 16 million Muslims?
I’m certainly no Einstein and math has never been my strong suit, but your figures don’t seem to jibe.
Kia,
“Since when do students in Egypt speak for radicals living in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan?”
Where do you think those radicals came from, and where do you think they get their support? They can’t exist in isolation, they get financial help and replacements from schools all over the middle-east. Win the young people and the extremists lose the base they need to survive. Bush always considered Al Qaida in isolation. He refused to see the sophisticated base it had built among students all over the middle-east. Obama’s making a good start toward reducing that base and weakening an organization that Bush’s narrow vision had helped grow for the last eight years.
I think I know what the problem is. Since President Obama is a ’secret’ Muslim he has access to a list of all the other 3 million ’secret’ Muslims.
That’s probably how he arrived at the figure of 7 million.
#
Daniel
Posted June 5, 2009 at 12:38 pm | Permalink
ANTI
Posted June 5, 2009 at 9:35 am | Permalink
In his speech in Cairo today, he put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million.
According to the CIA World Factbook, there are only 1.8 million Muslims here. President Einstein miscalculated by almost 400%.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I’m not following you’re math. Just the other day you posted that there were approximately 4.1 million Muslims in the United States. If Obama says there are 7 million, how is that a miscalculation of 400%?
Wouldn’t a miscalculation of 400% be over 16 million Muslims?
I’m certainly no Einstein and math has never been my strong suit, but your figures don’t seem to jibe.
=======================
7/1.8 = 3.88×100 388 percent
That’s with currently shown numbers – not ‘just the other day numbers.’ :D
You can’t win the hearts and minds by making platitudes and avoiding the specific issues that are essentially irreconciliable and are causing the core conflict.
President Obama really thinks that a speech is going to make a difference all else being the same?
Sure.
It’s a good beginning, and nothing is ever gained without a beginning.
How many of you have heard the entire speech or read the transcript? I have; and I think it would serve well as a social studies text for people to understand how a lot of problems in the Middle East happened.
President Obama was very forthright in describing our nations values and policy, while not being patronizing or dictatorial.
To listen to, or read the speech is to be in awe of how so much content and nuance could be conveyed in a way most people would welcome hearing-even if they get callled out.
Can you imagine bush addressing that big of an audience in the ME? He’d been buried in a pile of shoes!
Heard he added the part about not allowing females incantonations as being discrimination. Kind of risque considering his audience.
Here is a handy reference for Muslim population by country and region of the world.
Not sure how accurate it is. The source for the USA is a Muslim group. It’s spreadsheet
style, so you can click on columns and sort the data by different ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country#cite_note-267
I’m not following you’re math.
====================================
Probably because it wasn’t my math.
The numbers were quoted from the like I posted.
I went to the US Census bureau, but they site the same PEW source for some reason.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0074.xls
Daniel,
I don’t have the time or the patience to count every Muslim in the US, that is why I cited a link to the info.
#
ANTI
Posted June 5, 2009 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
Daniel,
I don’t have the time or the patience to count every Muslim in the US, that is why I cited a link to the info.
===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Understood, I was just surprised to see such a large difference between the two figures.
I was just surprised to see such a large difference between the two figures.
============================
I also was surprised.
Words, meanings, actions, consequences, nuances, enough to make a ‘pub head spin. How they must long for the good ol’ days: wif us, or agin us, terrorist appeasers, shock and awe, the simple talk that every commoner could understand and take to the bank!
Speaking of banks, have they found that commoner patriot that told the banker as he was withdrawing his 13 k, that he was going to kill Obama?
Jed,
Bush has done nothing to weaken the base. The extremist Muslims want two things. One, for America to get off its land, removal of bases and troops. Two, for America to stop trying to run their lives.
I will repeat what I have been saying for quite some time:
They do not hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we are over there. We try to police them, place harmful sanctions on them, build military bases on their land.
How can this not create hostility toward our nation?
I can’t even talk to ignorant people who think they just attack us because we are free and prosperous. Idiots like that upset me more than anything else.
Here is the solution. We need to pull out of the region altogether. We need to apologize for the senseless deaths our policy has caused. Then we need to mend our relationships with the people who hate us because of what we did to them, their family, and their country.
That is the Christian thing to do for all you people who distort my religion for personal gain.
Israel? Well, since it is a manmade fabricated state from a world government organization, we need to encourage peace and find a way to make up for what the UN did.
Israel had people co-exist for centuries on the holy land. No reason why that cannot happen again.
The muslims in palestine and everwhere else don’t like us strictly because of our defense of Israel. Obama’s speech does not include any specifics for how the status quo of America’s policy toward Israel will change.
Speaking to Muslims, Obama chides the Jews and then goes on to makes soundbites at Buchenwald to avoid being seen as not defending Israel. Speaking to Jews, Obama chides the Palestinians and places a prayer in the prayer wall. Obama simply wants the whole world to think that he is on their side.
Every liberal and conservative knows that Obama can hit their talking points while framing policy that undermines the logical implications of his own statements as an executive. Will the middle east realize they are being addressed by the same double speaking Obama as the rest of us has discovered?
The people that have attacked us and fire rockets in Israel are not moderate Islam, so if Obama is addressing Moderate islam, he is preaching to the choir.
We have not and never have been at war with moderate islam. As I understand it, Radical islam was radical and recruiting their members long before Bush ever set up Gauntanamo Bay.
What does this speech by Obama offer but hope that is groped for by none other then the most gullible?
Why would Iranians hate America.
Just because we knocked off their duly-elected Prime Minister Mossegedah in the 50’s (Operation Ajax) and put a feudal monarch with no popular support back on the throne (the Shah of Iran) just so we could funnel oil money to OUR big companies instead of the Iranian people and the King ruled with an iron fist for 25 plus years until the Ayatollah finally overthrew him.
Gee, what’s not to like?
RFL still thinks that invading middle eastern countries that pose no threat to us is a great idea.
But only if he doesn’t have to fight in it . . . or pay for it.
Next Obama will be apologizing for installing the Shah! Where will it end?
Something bush should have left in his note to Obama in the Oval Office, is “Being Preznit means never having to say you’re sorry, or having to admit to a mistake”.
Israel? Well, since it is a manmade fabricated state from a world government organization, we need to encourage peace and find a way to make up for what the UN did.
————
a manmade fabricated state? What is the United States?
The Jewish people certainly have a historical claim on that territory. Have those large Arab counties donate a little land to their Palestinian brothers for a homeland. But they want to demograph them Israel out of existence.
You know how many times in my life time I have heard those words about the middle east? Hope. Hope for a new beginning.
There really is no purpose for the USA to butt our nose into something not our business. The problem is between parties which do not concern us. It is none of our business.
But noooo. Every politician has to do his thing and get his picture with promises. Promises of hope.
At least Obama was smart enough in Germany to admit it. It is not under our control.
We should butt out completely. Instead, we inject ourselves into a fight. When the hope fades and promises are not kept and nothing changes.
We get blamed and attacked.
Why? So we will inject ourselves back into the fight we don’t belong in.
Over and over again. The great USA, the great military taking care of the world….
Yeah right.
As I like to say, we’re entitled to hope; in the end it may be all we have.
Not a single word about the Iranian elections?
Seriously, people: whatever you think about Obama’s overtures, if you aren’t paying attention to what’s happening over there, then you’re missing the real story.
Here: the first detailed link I could pull up (I neither endorse nor denigrate the source):
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=177343&bolum=109