The New Obama World

President Obama has exceeded all expectations I had of him as candidate Obama. In his last speech to the Muslim world he has elevated, not only the status of faithful, law-abiding people, but he has elevated the status of humankind. He has not given in to terrorism by recognizing that individual differences in religious belief do not make us adversaries. He has not given in to terrorist behavior by acknowledging that there are far more good Muslims living day-to-day, with the same goals and aspirations as those of us who are Christian, than there are terrorists invoking the Muslim religion as justification for their savage actions. He has recognized Muslims of all nations as a people who have longed to be recognized for the good they represent and not for the hate brought upon them by their own saboteurs.

For centuries Muslims have been feared, hated and misunderstood. To be sure their culture is vastly different from our American culture. They have suffered great religious persecution in much the same way Christians have experienced persecution. Nor have Muslims , by and large, been recognized in recent world history for the contributions made to art, technology and science. Just as United States history text books have left out huge amounts of information of the contributions of African-Americans to our national development, text books for classes in world history conspicuously leave out huge amounts of information about Muslim contributions. In my pursuit of information of the history of black Americans, I read a lot of books about Africans' contributions to the building of America that I never read in a text book in school. It is as if, once considered not equal by Western standards, certain ethnic populations just never existed.

If there is to be any reconciliation with nations that are prodominately Muslim it has to begin somewhere. President Obama's speech may have appeared to be apologetic to some Americans and less than adequate for some Muslims, but it was a beginning. It is true that no one else could have given that speech and connected so forcefully with the very people we need to engage in order to defeat terrorism. Muslims have suffered mightily from terrorism too and they have a huge human stake in eliminating it from their own lands.

There is such irony that at just the time when America needed someone to begin healing the religious and ethnic rifts in the world, that Obama burst onto the scene, seemingly out of nowhere as a African-American, and in short order, began a dialogue with the Muslim world.