By Daniel Williams and Edwin Chen,Bloomberg
Obama will try to woo the Arab world
President Barack Obama says he hopes his June 4 speech to the Muslim world will repair broken trust. He may find his audience disagrees on what needs to be fixed.
Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,say some. Dispel Western perceptions all Muslims are terrorists,say others. Then there are those focused on what the U.S. should —or shouldn’t —do about civil-liberties breaches in Islamic countries.
Muslim nations are hardly cohesive,with governments ranging from monarchies and dictatorships to democracies and 1.5 billion people who differ along both religious and political lines. When Obama speaks at Cairo University,all will be listening to hear which part of their universe he addresses.
“It would take a magician to deliver a speech to satisfy them all,” says Hala Mustafa,editor of Democracy Review,a Cairo political journal. Intellectuals want talk of freedom,average citizens care about economic advances and “dictatorial regimes” want apologies for U.S. policy,she says.