This journey has begun with his historic address to the Muslim world that could mean all things to all peoples. That, incidentally, was the basic rationale behind Obama’s plan to journey down, first to the heart of Islam, in Saudi Arabia, and thence to the heart of the Arab world, in Egypt. Diplomatic pundits in North America are already praising the 5000-word historic speech that might change the course of our world history.

From the day he has moved into the White House, Obama seems fully conscious of the need to undo the damage done by George W. Bush to US relations with the Muslim world, especially in the wake of the cataclysmic 9/11.

Obama has history on his side, in fact personal history to make not only amends in Bush’s purblind policy of going after the Muslim world with a crusading vengeance but also invest conscious efforts, himself, to turn a fresh page and start a new chapter with it. His own Islamic roots entitle him to seek a new modus vivendi with the Islamic world, something naturally facilitated for him. He seems alive to this reality and has made no effort to hide his past or be apologetic about it.

These are the best possible credentials that an American president could flaunt to open a new window to the Islamic world. And Obama did seem to be consciously and stridently making use of these credentials and the goodwill that his induction in the White House has generated throughout the Muslim world to reach out to the Islamic Ummah with an open heart.

A master tactician of the rostrum, Obama knew exactly how to establish an early and sentimental rapport with his young, educated and cultured audience present in the auditorium of Cairo University. He began with the typical Islamic salutation of Salam instantly triggering a tumultuous applause. He reminded his spell-bound audience of the Quranic injunction that one must speak the truth under all circumstances: “As the Holy Quran tells us, be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That was an ideal platform to build his argument upon it.

Obama recalled the great contribution that the Muslims had made in the past centuries to sciences, arts, architecture and literature, and noted “civilisation’s debt to Islam.” He was magnanimous in admitting that it was the Muslims who “paved the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”

Though ostensibly addressing the audience present in the auditorium he reminded his admirers and critics in the West: “Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires, timeless poetry and cherished music, elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.”

Obama candidly and respectfully discarded the neo con matrix of a clash of civilizations between the West and the world of Islam. Once again, quoting from the Holy Quran he drew everybody’s attention pointedly to the Quran’s categorical statement on the race issue: “The Holy Quran tells us, 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.”

Obama had no reservations in declaring that “America is not …at war with Islam.” He then went on to assert that a state of tension between the world of Muslims and the West preceded 9/11. He had no compunction in admitting that relations between these two spheres were weighed down by a long history of “ religious wars ( the Crusades)” as well as by the regressive “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”

Obama had the moral courage to admit the tirades the western world made in the not-too-distant-a-past, during the Cold War “in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies.” He mentioned, in this regard, the colossal injustice done to the Iranian people by US, in 1953, when the popularly elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddaq was subverted by the combined resources of CIA and the British intelligence.

Obama laced his address, throughout, by infusing into it a conscious respect for Muslim traditions and culture. Defending the hijab, Obama said: “Freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practise one’s religion…That’s why the US government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.” He was critical of those pseudo-liberals who have blown the hijab sky high as a symbol of female oppression and exploitation by insisting: “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.”

Obama could be taking a dig at France — where the government as custodian of the French spirit of liberte, has forbidden Muslim girls from wearing hijab at schools, or even Muslim Turkey where hijab-clad girls are frozen out of universities — when he said: “It is important for western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism.”

Speaking of the Sunni-Shiia divide, he chided the Muslims for their increasing intolerance for each other: “Among some Muslims , there’s a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of somebody else’s faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld, whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.”

Obama also made a conscious effort to jog the Muslim Ummah out of its laissez-faire attitude towards the danger posed to its moorings by rampant and rising terrorism within its ranks and reminded them that extremists among their own Muslims have killed “people of different faiths…more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” Obama admitted, disarmingly, that while Iraq was “a war of choice” Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.”

Obama conceded Iran’s right to harness nuclear energy for peaceful uses but wouldn’t allow it to develop into a nuclear weapon state. On the core Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio, which many see as the make-or-break issue for his presidency — and something on which he has been investing so much attention and effort so early in his term — he spoke, twice, of Palestine as a state for the Palestinians. He said: “It is undeniable that the Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians, have suffered…The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.”

On the unremitting plight of the people of Gaza, under siege from Israel, Obama had all sympathy and admitted that there is a “continued humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” However, not to be seen as becoming a partisan in the historic conflict, he reminded his audience of the “unbreakable” bond between US and Israel and, then, admonished the Palestinians of Gaza, in particular, to ‘abandon violence.”

By any unbiased yardstick it was a masterly performance of rhetorical flourish in which Obama said a lot of things that should please the world Muslim community and also force it to think over the gaping holes in its façade that it took a man as courageous and upright as Obama to point out.

However, a man as intelligent and perceptive as Obama can’t be oblivious of the trap doors ready to devour him and his revolutionary march to a new frontier. There is, at this juncture in history, a Zionist war-monger like Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm of affairs in Israel whose hatred of Palestinians and Muslims is legendary. As it is, the ultra-right phalanx is already touting plans to checkmate him, because they consider his foreign policy too ‘dangerously’ liberal. They are threatening to make him another Jimmy Carter with a one-term residency in the White House.

In the context of the Muslim world, Obama can’t be unmindful of the fact that this window of opportunity that has opened in the Muslim world because of the goodwill to offer him the room to pursue his policies will not remain open forever. The vast majority of Muslims subscribing to the pristine Islamic creed of co-existence with all other communities in the world will be prepared to forgive US, though not forget, the wounds an abrasive Bush inflicted on them, if only Obama would move quickly to heal those wounds. Black holes like Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib, the massacre of Haditha ( near Baghdad, in 2005) and, most recently, the Gaza siege should all be reminders to Obama that he has a long way to go before Muslms could start taking his protestations of peace for being real.

The Pakistanis are entitled to draw inspiration, in this period of national gloom, from Obama’s categorical reference to the need to build up Pakistan’s socio-economic infrastructure in order to drain out the swamp where Al Qaeda and its ilk feed. But Pakistanis, like all other Muslims, would like to see greater sensitivity in the Obama policies for Pakistan’s sovereign dignity, now being routinely violated and disparaged by American drones.

Obama has made a bold foray into the Muslim world. It’s a small step in a journey of thousand miles. The bridges of peace that Obama envisions will take all the effort from all around to build. Obama’s success or failure will be measured by how he levels the ground for this monumental task in his years in the White House.

The writer is a former ambassador.