Addressing tensions between the US and the Muslim world have been a clear priority for the Obama administration since day one, but the Cairo Speech signals a major step forward and underscores the seriousness of this administration to heal rifts with the the Muslim world.
In the latest step towards addressing the mistrust, fear and anger that characterize US relations with many in the Muslim world, the signaled a desire to overhaul American perceptions of Islam and challenged Muslim's to do the same.
The speech, delivered at Cairo University on June 4th, has prompted a mixed global reaction from different sides of the media representing those in both the Western and Muslim worlds the speech was clearly directed to.
The pro-Israel HonestReporting.com Website, which monitors and offers analysis on media coverage of Israel, was generally supportive of Obama's calls in the speech to confront the Holocaust denial rheoric that is increasingly found in the Mid-East.
But they side-stepped Obama's criticism of the Israeli settlement expansion policies in disputed areas of West Bank and other parts of Israel.
According to the BBC.com Republican House Minority leader John Boehner suggested in an interview that the speech portrayed the United States as weak based on Iran's support of Hamas and Obama's willingness to sit down and negotiate directly with Iranian political leaders.
Some conservative bloggers in the US, perhaps frustrated over Obama's broad high-profile media appeal, complained that the Cairo Speech lacked real substance and echoed the similar-sounding and usually factually abstract complaint that the speech made America seem "weak" in the eyes of the world.
Did it? Aren't compassion and understanding essential components for respect and therefore strength?
The conventional wisdom and spin on the speech shared on the al Jazeera Website suggests that millions of Muslims who watched the speech closely felt otherwise.
al Jazeera's Muqtedar Kahn described the speech as "truly transformative in intent and affect" and opined that "Never has an American President spoken with such eloquence, compassion, understanding and empathy to the Muslim World. There is no doubt that Obama gets the Muslim World."
That's a big philosophical shift for many Americans used to the Bush administration's rigid, one-dimensional post-911 casting of millions of Muslims as willing supporters of the 'Axis of Evil' rather than as individual citizens from different nations with a wide range of views on America.
For decades many Muslims have viewed America from the standpoint of a nation that destabilized a democratically-elected government in Iran to help install the Shah of Iran into power.
Many Americans from all walks of life have tended to view Islam from the perspective of angry Iranians holding American hostages captive in Tehran in 1979 and the terrorist attacks on US citizens that culminated with 911.
Obama's Cairo speech seems to lay out a willingness to engage in dialog that identifies common ground and a desire to move past thinking rooted in stereotypes and prejudice rather than truth and understanding.
Finding ways to push cultural respect and understanding forward is a sign of strength, living in fear of that is a sign of weakness.
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