Never before has a US President been so earnest, candid or sensitive in reaching out to Muslims across the globe and assure them that the US bears no animus towards them and intends to improve relations with them.

Mr. Obama's speech comes at a time when the whole Islamic world is seething with anger against violent US interventions in Muslim-majority countries. Even “moderate” states like Egypt fit this pattern. Recent polls show that almost two-thirds of Egyptians believe that Washington plays a negative global role and three-fourths think it wants to weaken and divide the Islamic world. President Obama has chosen the right moment to call for “a new beginning”, based on the recognition of history's injustices and Muslim grievances.

The speech has had a profound impact on West Asia and the Maghreb, and was welcomed by many Muslims elsewhere in the world too—where three-fourths of them live. Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery Iraqi cleric, appreciated it as “soft spoken and eloquent”. Many political leaders have welcomed some of its formulations.

For instance, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said Mr. Obama's words reflected a “tangible change”, despite “contradictions”. Some former leaders of Islamic Jihad too termed the speech “historic”, and said it lays “the foundation for a relationship based on mutual respect”. But the Israeli Right is yet to recover from the shock it suffered from Mr. Obama's advocacy of a Palestinian homeland. This is a good test to judge the overall worth of the address.

Mr. Obama spoke sincerely, respectfully and yet passionately, adding the personal touch that's typical of American political discourse. The emphasis on his personal connection with Islam through lineage, interaction with Muslims, and familiarity with the Holy Quran struck a resonant chord.

Mr. Obama advanced several propositions. First, there's no incompatibility between “Western” values and Islam, or between modern institutions such as democracy, on the one hand, and Islamic culture, on the other. He underscored several traits in Islam which support a relaxed and comfortable approach towards democracy, human rights and tolerance. Mr. Obama cited peaceful Muslim-Christian-Jewish coexistence during the Middle Ages and Islam's “proud tradition of tolerance … in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition”.

Second, Mr. Obama said that the foundational basis of the American political system is expansive enough to accommodate the spirit of diversity and plurality, including its society's multi-religious and multicultural nature. Muslims have a definite space within the US. Third, he admitted that the Western world hasn't quite behaved as if it respected Islam. Although he didn't go into the history of colonialism and imperialism, implicit in his speech is a critique of the politics of domination. Mr. Obama sharply described the invasion of Iraq as “a war of choice”—in contrast to the Afghanistan war, driven by “necessity”. This formulation is problematic, as we see below, but it does acknowledge that the US was wrong to invade Iraq.

Fourth, Mr. Obama highlighted the question of Palestine and the “suffering” of its people, and stressed the imperative need for a just two-state solution. True, he did say that the US-Israel bond is “unbreakable”, but he pulled no punches in deploring the Israeli policy on settlements on land illegally appropriated from the Palestinian people.

Fifth, the President promised to talk to Iran without preconditions. He defended Iran's right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities compatible with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The emphasis here was on non-proliferation, not nuclear disarmament. Had he added a few lines from his Warsaw speech on his vision of a nuclear weapons-free world, and America's own nuclear disarmament obligations under Article VI of the NPT, he would have been more balanced.

These statements mark a big change in discourse. But they fall short of the threshold of change in policy and action. For instance, on Palestine, Mr. Obama refers to “violent extremism” and deplores violence by Israel and Hamas. But there's a big difference here between the Israeli state and the Palestinian people. Israel is an occupying power and has no legal or moral rights.

On the other hand, the Palestinians are protected under international law and the Geneva Conventions. They have a right to resist occupation—including the use of military means against occupation soldiers (although not civilians). The two kinds of violence are different in nature and scale. Israel has killed many more Palestinian civilians—many orders of magnitude more—than the other way around, including 1,400 Gazans during its recent invasion.

Mr. Obama also glides over the root-causes of violence from the Palestinian side and their “suffering” in “pursuit of a homeland”. But the Palestinians had a homeland and were driven out of it in the Naqba of 1948. They face inhuman and humiliating oppression and deprivation under Israel's policy of deliberate dispossession and impoverishment. This policy has turned Gaza into the world's biggest concentration camp after Israel's pullout.

Similarly, Mr. Obama's description of the Palestinians and Israelis as “two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history” is wrong: it ignores the gross disproportion between the two. He goes further than most US leaders in recognising “legitimate Palestinian aspirations” but limits them to “dignity, opportunity and a state of their own” and doesn't mention the vital right of return from exile caused by their “dislocation” for six decades.

Mr. Obama exhorts Israel to “live up to its obligation” to end the occupation and “acknowledge” the Palestinians' right to a homeland. But he falls short of promising to secure Israel's compliance through sanctions and by making the US's annual $3 billion military aid to Israel conditional on a complete freeze on settlements and adherence to numerous Security Council resolutions—e.g., 242 and 338, which it has brazenly violated.

On Iran, Mr. Obama acknowledges the US's “role in the overthrow of a democratically elected … government”, but equates it with Iran's culpability for “acts of hostage-taking and violence against US troops and civilians”. The two cannot be equated. But it's a big step for a US President to take responsibility for the 1953 overthrow of the Mossadegh government. Mr. Obama should have called for a regional peace conference involving Iran. But he didn't. Nor has he explicitly rejected calls for a broad anti-Iran alliance including the US, Israel and the Arab states.

On Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the US invasion was “a war of necessity” which reflects “America's goals”. This is questionable. His statements that “we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan” and “we seek no military bases there” are no more than expressions of pious intent. Mr. Obama has made Afghanistan his own war and emphasised that US troops are there because there are “violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can”. This suggests prolonged occupation.

The plan to donate small sums ($2.8 billion) to help the Afghans “develop their economy” pales into insignificance beside the $100 billion war-funding requested for Iraq and Afghanistan. US development aid to Afghanistan is yet to match the levels of military funding to the mujahideen during the Soviet occupation.

Mr. Obama debunks the Bush administration claim that the Iraq war was meant to “promote democracy” and says that “no system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other” and that the US “would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election and that we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments …”. But this doesn't square up with the US record or recent statements by other US leaders on making their support to governments in the region dependent on the outcome of elections, as in Lebanon.

There is a larger problem with Mr. Obama's speech. He essentially talks to the faithful, and homogenises Islam across its diverse histories, cultures, practices and customs. This leaves little room for secular Muslims or for those who are Muslim by virtue of culture and not theological faith. It leaves no room for Muslim women fighting for equality.

Despite these gaps, elisions and flaws, Mr. Obama's speech makes a major break with the US tradition of hegemonism, militarism and unilateralism. It signifies movement towards a cooperative and peaceful engagement with the Islamic world.

This shift is important. But it must be translated into new policies and actions on the ground—towards ending the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, resolutely pushing for a just solution to the Palestinian question, and for negotiations with Iran, Israel and other regional states which lead to a Middle Eastern zone free of mass-destruction weapons as a step towards global nuclear weapons elimination. That agenda is still ahead of us. (IPA Service)