Obama Calls for Alliances With Muslims  —  CAIRO — President Obama pledged on Thursday to “seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” imploring America and the Islamic world to drop their suspicions of one another and forge new alliances to confront violent extremism and heal religious divides.

Let Women Wear the Hijab: The Emptiness of Obama's Cairo Speech  —  I know many will gush over President Obama's Cairo speech and I'm likely swimming against the tide of the media and my fellow Democrats and progressives.  But reading the transcript, I was struck by two things:

“The streets surrounding the university and across the city were largely quiet and empty on Thursday.  Many workers in the Egyptian capital had been told to stay home."  —  Listening to Robin Wright, Ed Rollins and others on CNN discuss the president's speech, I am struck by the unreality …

What Barack Hussein Obama told Muslims in Egypt (text here)  —  President Barack Hussein Obama, born to a Muslim father and educated in a Muslim country, won a rousing response in Cairo today with an outreach to a Muslim world that reviled his predecessor George W. Bush.

Obama seeks Islam ‘common ground’  —  CAIRO - In remarks being translated live for broadcasts and Webcasts in every major language, President Barack Obama said Thursday that the United States wants “common ground” and “a new beginning” with the Muslim world, where America's image plummeted …

THE CAIRO SPEECH.  —  Earlier this morning, President Obama gave a speech in Cairo addressing the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East.  There are a number of things I want to address later, but for now I'm going to put up the video and the full text.