by David Werdiger

Created on: June 11, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

You've probably heard a lot about Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last week. Plenty was said before and after, and it may come to be a watershed moment in US-Muslim relations. Now some of you might've read the speech, or watched it (it's quite long), but for those who haven't (and those who have), here is an abridged version that will give you the gist of what all the fuss was about:

Good afternoon. My name is Barack Hussein Obama, leader of what used to be the free world. I don't look like previous presidents, my name makes you wonder what I am, and I've gone to a lot of trouble to pronounce Arabic words properly, even stressing the second syllable in Islam just like you do. Thanks in advance for the thundering applause every time I quote the Koran. I do that to establish some kind of connection between our peoples. It's called empathy. A lot of this speech is about empathy, which is a uniquely western concept that I'd like you to understand. I will wait until the day I die for some reciprocity; with more speeches like this, it is sure to come soon.

Americans aren't all rednecks and colonialists, just like Muslims aren't all fundamentalists and terrorists. I'm really sorry for all the bad stuff we did to you. I'm even sorry for the mess the British and French made divvying up the Middle East after the World War I (although they were just making deals with regional Caliphs to entrench them in power). I'm sorry for everything anyone has done to the Muslim world, or anything you think we might've done, or anything you think we might do. I will use the term 'mistrust' to refer to all of that, and use it as many times as possible as a proxy for apologising. To show I'm balanced, I will mention one or two of the really bad stuff the Muslim world (ooops, I mean a few lone terrorists in the name of Islam) have done to the West.

Make no mistake: Islam is a part of America. We've seen what 'home grown' terrorists have done in the UK, and we are sh*t-scared of what they might do to us. Because we can't close our borders and because our Dept of Homeland Security are a bunch of inept fools, we've decided that if we appease the Muslim world, they might not want to blow up our citizens.

There are a few specific issues I want to raise today.

Everyone thinks that violent extremism is something associated with Islam. We prefer to think that by pumping money into third-world dictatorships and hoping that they spend it on education and infrastructure, everyone will

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