Repeat After Me

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

Loftily eloquent, confident words of determination issued during the inaugural address of President Barack Obama. Of course, he also offered an open mind and open hand to those who nominally present as antagonists, but who may find it within themselves to be amenable to reason. Not so much, obviously, the fanatical jihadists who have successfully targeted a previously unwary America, but that great expanse of others uncertain where they fit in the general scheme of suspicion and blame.

This a resolute man of great integrity, a man of forceful imagination and intelligent design. So recently invested into the great and cumbersome burdens of his office, yet so willing to immediately take up the duties of that office. Expanding on the manner in which his soaring rhetoric, unqualified as it was, as lacking in details as it was, enthused and liberated the minds and expectations of the American electorate.

He has begun his agenda with a flourish, and initiated his international diplomacy straight off. Assigning difficult duties to those in whom he has invested trust to further his vision and his ideas and his political and social values. Encouraging his people to have trust and remain patiently optimistic. Visiting, in early February, his closest geographic neighbour. And appearing on Al Arabiya television for an acquainting interview.

He aspired, he said, to convince both Americans and Muslims around the world that they have mutual interests. "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives", he informed Al Arabiya's Washington bureau chief, Hisham Melhem.

Conversely, complementarily, "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name." He plans to extend his international travel itinerary to include an as-yet-unnamed Muslim country to further make his point.

He has a certain familiarity with Islam, in the first person. It was the faith of his father, and remains the faith of his distant relatives, still living in Kenya where his father was born. And during his childhood years, Barack Hussein Obama, the child of two vastly different worlds, lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world.

President Obama addressed the situation in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians, stressing his belief in the mission that his newly-appointed emissary has been tasked with; emphatically searching for viable solutions to bridge the pernicious gap between the two solitudes. "What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating...".

And then he boldly asserted that he rejects the belief that Israeli settlements and other construction in the West Bank impedes the potential of moving the file toward a peace settlement forward, toward a two-state solution. As for Iran, while acknowledging that the Islamic Republic had "acted in ways that [were] not conducive to peace and prosperity" he is prepared to speak with them, too.

Now then, could a more generously spirited and clear offering to engage in civil discourse with a view to finding solutions to the seemingly insoluble antagonisms between the values and mores of two vastly different empires be more emphasized and appear more promising?