Obama Speaking to the Whole World – By Eboo Patel

Via Newsweek’s OnFaith blog

President Obama is making his long-awaited speech to the Muslim world tomorrow morning in Cairo. Everyone is talking about what message he should send to the Muslim world. But the truth is, it isn’t just citizens of Muslim majority countries that will be tuning in.

Obama will be addressing the 930 million Hindus in India, and the 5 million Jews in Israel, and the 38 million Catholics in Spain, and the 500,000 Muslims in his own city of Chicago.

Tomorrow, Obama does more than discuss how the United States will relate to the Muslim world. He sets the precedent for how diverse peoples and nations should interact in the 21st century. I have no doubt that Cairo was chosen as the stage for this message because of its history of religious pluralism, a history it shares with America and with Islam.

Take for instance the Fatimid dynasty, which ruled from Cairo from the 10th to the 12th century. This dynasty was known for its pluralistic nature of rule, demonstrating religious tolerance for other sects of Islam, Jews, and Coptic and Maltese Christians. In 975, the Fatimid dynasty, ruled by Shi’a Muslims, also established what is now widely considered the global center of Sunni Islamic scholarship – the famous Al-Azhar University.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/eboo_patel/2009/06/obama_in_cairo.html