It started with “assalaamu alaykum” and ended with “may God’s peace be upon you.” Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a “new beginning” in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course — you can find positive and negative reactions here.

(Photo: Iraqi in Baghdad watches Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Mohammed Ameen)

Among Obama’s Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts — Muslims and non-Muslims — mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it’s not often that you hear an American president talking about them.

Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren’t the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in “the region where (Islam) was first revealed” – a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.

The other came when he said Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.” The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad’s Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together.” The interjection “peace be upon them” had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.

(Photo: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip watch Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate — 7 million — that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He didn’t repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don’t back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don’t keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he’s taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That’s way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That’s nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that’s why his speechwriters backed off the “one of the largest” claim.

The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: “The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

(Photo: Egyptians in cafe watch Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Asmaa Waguih)

But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: “The Talmud tells us: ‘The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.’ The Holy Bible tells us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’.”

What did you think of Obama’s speech?

Here’s a short video about the speech:

When President Barack Obama delivers his long-awaited speech in Cairo on Thursday, will he address the Muslim world or the Arab world? In the pre-speech build-up, it’s being called a speech “to the Muslim world” or “to the world’s 1.x billion Muslims” (the estimated total mentioned in different articles fluctuates between 1and 1.5 billion). But the venue he’s chosen — Cairo — and all the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict make it sound like a speech to and about the Middle East.

(Photo: President Barack Obama, 21 May 2009/Kevin Lamarque)

The Middle East is the heartland of Islam, but Arabs make up only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims. Not all Arabs are Muslims. And non-Arab Iran is a major part of the Middle Eastern political scene. So is it correct to call this a speech to the Muslim world? Would it be better to call it a speech to the Middle East?

There is such an important overlap between the Arab and the Muslim worlds that it is hard to disentangle them. The Palestinian issue concerns Muslims around the world, but with varying intensity depending partly on whether it figures in regional politics or stands as a more distant symbol of oppression against Muslims. Politics can also poison Muslim relations with Jews, which can range from bitter enmity to interfaith cooperation depending on where, when and how one looks. The U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq may be justified in Washington as operations against international terrorism, but in Muslim countries they are often seen as attacks on Muslims and Islam.

When this speech was first announced as an address to the Muslim world, I blogged here and here that he should deliver it in Turkey or Indonesia because they were doing more to reconcile Islam and modern democracy than any Arab state. “As a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses,” I wrote.

(Photo: Cairo at dusk, 14 April 2009/Tarek Mostafa)

The pressing question of how Islam relates to politics and society in the 21st century has an important religious component, because any adaptation or development would have to come from within a tradition that looks to religious authority to bless important changes. A speech addressing this would necessarily have to deal with religion, which is after all what Muslim countries have in common regardless of their geography, ethnicity, languages, traditions or politics.

Articles looking ahead to the speech focus mostly on the political, i.e. the Middle East peace process. Reuters has run a long curtainraiser today entitled “Obama to address tough issues in speech to Muslims” that touches on the Middle East, oil and international terrorism (BTW “speech to Muslims” is a neat way to get around the problem under discussion here). Washington also ran “Q+A: Why is Obama speech to Muslim world important?” and an earlier analysis on May 31 entitled “PREVIEW-Obama speech to Muslims key to new U.S. strategy.” That analysis mixed the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, saying “President Barack Obama will try to repair America’s tarnished image in the Muslim world on Thursday, as he looks to mobilize support for restarting Middle East peacemaking and thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Another article by our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon, “Muslims want more than fine talk from Obama,” shows how complex all this is. Surveying opinion across the Muslim world, he found the Palestinian issue stood out as their main concern. But wider issues also emerged, for example a general desire to feel the U.S. president respects Muslims and Islam — a message Obama has already been sending. As for the venue, it seems that Arabs found the choice of Cairo very appropriate while a Malaysian and an Iranian Lyon quoted thought it was a bad choice.

(Photo: Fireworks at Malaysia’s Putra Mosque near Kuala Lumpur, 31 Aug 2003/Bazuki Muhammad)

In one of its pre-speech articles, the New York Times wrote that “when President Obama delivers a much-anticipated speech in Cairo, he will be addressing so many audiences, and seeking to advance so many agendas, that even his oratorical gifts are likely to be taxed.”

How do you think Obama should pitch his speech? Is it possible to juggle both the immediate political concerns of the Middle East with wider issues concerning the whole Muslim world? Or is it impossible not to?

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Rev. Bud Heckman is Director for External Relations at Religions for Peace (New York) and Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York.

By Rev. Bud Heckman and Matthew Weiner

In the foreshadow of President Obama’s much anticipated speech to the Muslim world and on peace this week, there is new hope for peace in the Middle East. Its source is the opposite of what many may think: religion, and the extraordinary promise of principled inclusion of religions in seeking solutions for peace and justice.

Of course, in one sense this is nothing new. Think of the Peace of Westphalia and the political virtue of tolerance developed in response to bloody religious civil wars, which were no less serious than any religious conflict we face today. One difference now — to some degree the result of secularization — is the assumption that the political and public is more frequently separate from the religious. That is to say, an assumption arises that we can do without religion in the public sphere to solve public problems. With this secular mind set, when making a political peace, it is assumed that religion should be sidelined or asked to join only in some superficial way.

(Photo: An image of Barack Obama made from postage stamps at the Asian International Stamp Exhibition in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

But this neglects the very real power of religion when it comes to developing shared forms of peace-building and reconciliation. In fact, the very frameworks of social justice and peace that good minded politicians hold dear often emerge from these religious moral principles.

Again, U.S. President Barack Obama will make what presages to be an historic address in Cairo on June 4. We are among those who eagerly await details of his peace plan as well as the dialogue that his announcement will spark around the world. Together with President Obama, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and King Abdullah II of Jordan have each offered to bring fresh initiatives towards achieving security and peace in the Middle East. These are encouraging signs. Prioritization of attention and resource allocation on behalf of the United States, the other members of the Quartet, and Arab countries are welcome developments.

However, these initiatives alone are not enough. In fact, too often grand peace agreements are reached with little attention either before or after to building peace on the ground, between communities, which leads to festering and a breakdown of peace later on. Instead religious communities must be engaged through their own moral structures. We believe that the collective voices and actions of millions of people of faith can make a meaningful and substantive contribution to forging lasting peace.

We know and delight in the powerful and positive resources for healing, reconciliation, and justice within our respective traditions. From our work together in such organizations as Religions for Peace, we have witnessed first-hand the irreplaceable strength and effectiveness of our multi-religious cooperation.

(Photo: Jordan’s King Abdullah (R) welcomes Middle East envoy Tony Blair in Amman, 8 Jan 2008/Yousef Allan)

Political leaders may inspire their citizens, but they largely and historically address the outward aspects of our lives. Religious leaders primarily seek to address the extraordinary power of the inner life; that may, in turn, powerfully affect the outer life. Our texts and our traditions provide a tremendous moral impetus for peace and justice.

Those who argue that religion is part of the problem will agree that religion must be part of any effective solution. As President Obama himself has repeatedly said, “religion is a force for good greater than any government.” This absence of religion has been one of the major failings of past peace initiatives in the region. It has lead to premature and shallow agreements for peace. We don’t need a process that ends with just another morally impotent handshake on the White House lawn.

The current efforts led by President Obama, former Prime Minister Blair, and King Abdullah could hold great new promise in these regards. Each leader has acknowledged the powerful and unique role that religious communities can and should have in addressing our most difficult problems. However, this must be practically translated into accepting religious leaders as genuine and principled partners in a comprehensive solution for peace.

We believe in the possibility of peace from the very core of our beings, based on the deepest dimensions of our faith.

Americans who are so inclined are marking their National Day of Prayer on Thursday — and, as with any event that evokes church and state in this country, it is not without controvesy.

President Barack Obama, who is a practicing Christian, signed a proclamation to declare the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, but unlike his predecessor George W. Bush did not hold an official service at the White House.

This has predicatably angered and disappointed some of the country’s leading conservative Christians.

“While there is a long history of Presidents praying and calling the nation to prayer (dating all the way back to George Washington), a de-emphasis on prayer in this administration should not come as a surprise. What can we expect of an administration whose policies cheapen human life, increase dependence upon government and threaten religious freedoms?” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential conservative advocacy group with strong evangelical ties.

Under Bush the White House event — held on the first Thursday of May — was seen among other things as a way to shore up the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base, whose ranks included some of his most ardent supporters.

Obama opted for private prayer but by European standards his proclamation would hardly be viewed as lurch to secularism.

In his proclamation, Obama said:

“Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill. Our world grows smaller by the day, and our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife; and to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.”

He also said: “I call upon Americans to pray in thanksgiving for our freedoms and blessings and to ask for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection for this land that we love.”

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama bows his head in prayer during the dedication of Abraham Lincoln Hall at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington March 12, 2009. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES)

U.S. President Barack Obama may face a new minefield on the battlefields of Afghanistan — one that combines a potent mix of religion and culture.

Explosive allegations have emerged that U.S. soldiers have been attempting to convert Afghanis to Christianity, a scenario sure to stir passions and even anger in the overwhelming Islamic country. You can see our story on the issue here by my colleague Peter Graff in Kabul.

The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of Bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: “The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”

Critics have long contended that parts of the U.S. military have been unduly influenced by a powerful evangelical Christian wing which has pressured men and women in uniform to convert or conform.

Many U.S. military events often feature public prayers which some also say blur the line they say should be drawn between church and state. We have blogged on this issue before.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has for years tried to raise public awareness about this issue and has in the past accused the military of sanctioning missionary activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Headed by former U.S. air force judge advocate Mikey Weinstein, it said on Monday that: “His (Weinstein’s) calls for action have been met with a full assault of denials, baseless and anti-Semitic accusations, and most recently imprecatory prayers against him and his family. But now there is VIDEO PROOF that Mikey has been right all along.”

The U.S. military has said that the comments from the sermon shown in the video were taken out of context and that it firmly prohibits soldiers from proseltyzing while on duty.

Whether this is true or not, there is no question that at least some damage has been done.

Here’s the Al Jazeera video:

(Photo: U.S. Marines bow their heads in prayer before the arrival of President Barack Obama at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, February 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES))

When things are down and out people tend to go in search of higher powers.

And President Barack Obama is, after all, a person (and does not walk on water like some fans might believe).

His speech on the economy, given in a hall with painted religious figures at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, was sprinkled with religious metaphors. Perhaps he's hoping for some divine intervention out of the country's financial mess.

(The religious metaphors come on the heels of Obama's first attendance at a Sunday church service since he became president. Coincidence?)

"There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit," Obama said.

"But the second is known as the wise man, for when '...the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house...it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

And wait for it... here it comes... the tying of the Sermon on the Mount to the U.S. economy...

"We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock," Obama said.

And the president isn't the only one in government getting religion on the economy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech titled "Four Questions about the Financial Crisis" -- a reference to the Jewish holiday of Passover.

"As you may know, a highlight of the traditional Passover meal occurs when the youngest child asks four questions, the answers to which tell the history of the Jews when they were slaves in Egypt and during their exodus to the Promised Land," the head of the U.S. central bank said.

"In the spirit of the holiday, today I will pose and answer four important questions about the financial crisis," Bernanke said.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama at Georgetown University), Reuters/Str Old (Aerial view near Sea of Galilee of hill where Jesus gave Sermon on the Mount)

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama attended his first Sunday church service as president on Easter Sunday, greeted by hundreds of onlookers at an Episcopal church a block from the White House.

Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha sat about halfway down the first row in the packed but intimate St. John's, across Lafayette Park from the White House.

Throngs of onlookers packed the streets around the church and behind police barricades, even though, according to a White House official, the location was not disclosed until Sunday.

There was intense competition among area churches to lure the Obamas, according to reports.

Known to many as the "Church of the Presidents," every president since James Madison has attended the church, either on a regular or occasional basis, according to St. John's.

Obama had not attended church in Washington as president since Inauguration Day, when he attended a service at the National Cathedral, according to an aide.

The service focused on allowing the skeptical come to their faith in time.

"Easter is available to believers as well as doubters," Reverend Luis Leon said in his sermon. "It's important that you believe in as much of God as you can today ... and that is good enough."

At one point, he led a prayer for the president, other elected officials, and people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and the Middle East, among others.

Several in the audience said they were unaware the president would be attending the service.

Obama was dogged during his campaign by controversial comments about race by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Chicago.  Obama later distanced himself from the pastor.

 For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque - President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama depart St. John's Episcopal Church after attending an Easter service in Washington on April 12, 2009.

U.S. President Barack Obama ended his trip to Muslim Turkey on Tuesday by calling for peace and dialogue with Islam and the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

In his first trip as president to the Muslim world, Obama sought to rebuild ties after anger at the invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and accusations his predecessor George W. Bush was biased in favor of Israel.

You can see some of our coverage of his trip here and here.

Obama’s visit, in which he said America “will never be at war with Islam,” marks a strong shift in U.S. policy after his predecessor Bush upset Muslims with his backing for Israel, invasion of Iraq and branding of Iran as part of an “axis of evil.”

Obama will now need to flesh out, through policies, his promises to engage the Muslim world.

Among other things, Obama clearly seems keen to avoid the “clash of civilizations” that the late political scientist Samuel Huntington famously evoked.

In his 1996 “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which expanded on his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Huntington divided the world into rival civilizations based mainly on religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism and said competition and conflict among them was perhaps inevitable.

Obama, a practicing Christian who spent part of his youth in overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia, clearly envisions a different scenario unfolding between Islam and the West.

What do you think? Are civilizations doomed to clash, especially if they have deep religious differences? Or can diplomacy, cooler heads, and common values prevail?

(Photo : U.S. President Barack Obama (C) and Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (L) visit Byzantine era monument of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul April 7, 2009. REUTERS/Erhan Sevenler/Pool (TURKEY)

U.S. President Barack Obama signaled on Tuesday that he would be open to policy changes on stem cell research if the science on adult stem cells determined that thorny ethical issues could be avoided without harming medical advancement.

Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research earlier this month, angering abortion opponents but cheering those who believe the study could produce treatments for many diseases.

Asked at a White House news conference if he wrestled with the ethics of the issue, given the promise in adult stem cell research, Obama said:

“Now, I am glad to see progress is being made in adult stem cells.  And if the science determines that we can completely avoid a set of ethical questions or political disputes, then that’s great.  I have — I have no investment in causing controversy.  I’m happy to avoid it if that’s where the science leads us.”

But he said based on the potential gains to be made to alleviate human suffering in embryonic stem cell research, he felt he had done the right thing.

  “… what I don’t want to do is predetermine this based on a very rigid ideological approach, and that’s what I think is reflected in the executive order that I signed.”

Many social conservatives are opposed to embryonic stem cell research because it involves the destruction of human embryos. But some staunch opponents of abortion rights support human embryonic stem cell research, which supporters say could lead to insights that could provide treatments for diseases from diabetes to AIDS.

Stem cell experts agree that all types of stem cells should be developed, but it is not clear which offer the best route to a new type of therapy called regenerative medicine, in which it is hoped doctors can replace brain cells destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease, reverse genetic defects like cystic fibrosis, and regrow severed spinal cords.

Obama’s remarks suggest that if the science points conclusively in a direction that avoids ethical or political landmines, then he would be glad to take that route.

(Photo: Obama smiles during news conference at White House, March 24, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES POLITICS BUSINESS)

The howls of protest against fat cat bonuses during this financial crisis stem from a deep-seated source of moral outrage. For many people, it just seems like common sense that it’s unfair for Wall Street executives to reward  themselves for creating the mess robbing millions of their savings.

(Photos: Protest outside Goldman Sachs in New York, 19 March 2009/Eric Thayer)

Evolutionary biologists and social psychologists believe this moral sense is innate, an instinct for cooperation and fairness that has been honed over millions of years of natural selection into a universal moral grammar that gives us a “gut feeling” about ethical dilemmas.

If we have this moral instinct, it would seem natural for politicians to appeal to it. Some are doing that, while others seem to be missing the mark. The news over the weekend from the United States and France shows the two different approaches in action.

In the U.S., President Barack Obama — a man who knows how to speak movingly about justice and values — is coming under fire for not rising to the challenge with an appeal to higher motives. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman took him to task on Saturday:

“We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle…

“President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified… Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it…

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.”  … Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

In France, from where I’m watching all this, the government has been openly talking in moral terms for months. Back in September, when the crisis really hit, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the end of “a financial capitalism that had imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it. The idea of the absolute power of the markets that should not be constrained by any rule, by any political intervention was a mad idea. The idea that markets are always right was a mad idea.”

(Photo: President Sarkozy speaks in Toulon, 25 Sept 2008/Jean-Paul Pelissier)

A month later, he said that crisis aid for banks, which totalled 10.5 billion euros in 2008, meant that bankers had had entered into “a moral pact” with the nation to fight the financial crisis together. “Today, everyone has to live up to his responsibilities. There is a moral pact.” When the large bank Société Générale, which got 1.7 billion of those euros in aid, decided last week to award its four top executives with a total of 350,000 stock options, Sarkozy called that a scandal.

In one of the best sound bites of the season, Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said “It’s about time that Société Générale rhymes a bit more with ‘intérêt général’” (the general or public interest). This speaks directly to the disgruntled voters’ feeling that big bonuses and stock options right now violate the common good.  She also threatened legal action to regulate executive pay if the companies wouldn’t do it themselves.  SocGen got the message and its executives gave up the stock options within hours of Lagarde’s comments on French radio.

(Photo: Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, 6 Nov 2008/Benoit Tessier)

For an excellent discussion of the ethical aspect of this crisis, take a look at this opinion piece — “Morals: the one thing markets don’t make” –by Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In it, he bemoans “the gradual disappearance of the cluster of principles that went by the name of morality. Whatever its source - religion, conscience, custom or code - it meant that there are certain things you don’t do because they are not done. You don’t reward yourself when customers, clients or shareholders or employees are suffering losses. You don’t pay yourself out of all proportion to what you pay others. You don’t take advantage of your position just because you can. You are guided, even if no one is watching, by a sense of what is responsible and right. Without that internalised code of honour and trust, no institution can be sustained in the long run.”

What do you think about the role of moral principles in this crisis? Is Sacks right to saw no institution can survive in the long run without a moral code that no law can lay down?