Obama's Speech In Cairo....

For those who didn't get to watch or to listen to the first US black president speech in Cairo, don't worry, just simply click here, to read out his script, so that you guys can follow what i'm gonna say...

If i'm not mistaken, it is for the first time in decades an American President at last admits some of the serious failures of his nation. Here is a President who comes out with some concrete plans such as scholarships for students, annual investment of $1.5 billion for the next five years to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses in Pakistan, $2.8 billion to help Afghans to develop their economy, and so on.

Obama has made a very remarkable starting in his speech, by introducing the Islamic greeting "ASSALAMU-ALAY-KUM". What satisfy me most, is that he'd actually promote the peace behaviour of Islam and simultaneously gave a good perception to the world about Islam. When i browsed the internet, i found that, people out there, mostly the non-Muslims, had done research on this Arabic phrase. They asked for the meaning, the purpose of greeting in this way, the beauty behind its translation, "peace be upon Him", and who is "him" in this phrase. Seeeing this, made me wanna cry out loud, "Alhamdulillah"..why..??because, he actually had made the people start to wonder and discover more on Islam and i do hope that there is at least one person out there, confessing Islam due to this magnificent greeting made by Obama.

In his speech, he also emphasised on the modernity and the globalization led by Islam once ago. This shows that not only the muslims acknowledge the glory of Islam, but the whole world actually does!! And therefore, realising this acknowledgement, i do hope that we, the muslims, struggle harder to regain our achievements,because thinking of this, made me wonder, how Muslims nowadays are left far behind in soooo many fields. We, now, had become the workers and no longer the rulers, and for sure, no such thing as Islam Empire. The pass has now remains as history...

It is also interesting in the way our first coloured US president promoted the holy thoughts in Islam; where peace is the tradition of the religion. It may seem a small matter since he too promoted peace in other religion, e.g Christian, but in this case, it is significant to Islam since the world's nation nowadays see Muslims as terrorists. In this particular way, he at least could help the non-muslims to give a better speculation towards Muslims or at least to realise them that it is not the religion that teach violence, but it is the people themselves that chose to do so. The quotations from the Quran read by Obama had also astonished all the listeners. What he mentioned wasn't wrong, in fact, it was really unexpected! I, myself, would give him a great applause and appreciation for his effort in neutralising people's bad speculation towards Islam.

Okay, enough with the compliments. Now let's move on to the critics.

The first question that comes across my mind is will the president's speech make a positive difference in U.S./Muslim relations??? Yes it will, but the impact will be minimal. It's very important to understand that there was very little in Obama's speech that hasn't already been said by previous administrations — including the Bush administration. Even on the issue of calling on Israel to freeze settlement expansion, the president said nothing new. As a matter of fact, every president from Carter until now has said the same thing, and absolutely nothing has changed because Israel refuses to comply with America's wishes and America continues to bankroll the Israeli government. Muslims know that President Obama is very unlikely to change the status quo in this arrangement — especially with Netanyahu in power!

And to me, Obama has gone a little too far on mentioning the common values of America (Christian) and Islam. Saying that they both share common principles, i really beg to differ. Christians has separated the church and state in developing their civilazation. In Islam, we don’t practice this idea of separation. Church, as in mosque, for Islam, have to be align with the state (development) of the particular country.

Well, that is all i would say. I’m actually not really good in analysing neither to condemn them, and this is my first time in doing so. I donno why this speech had attracted me in doing so, but it finally comes to an end. Thanks for reading!