In downtown Jerusalem, hardly any Israelis paused from their shopping to hear U.S. President Barack Obama's televised Cairo speech. Most will hear snippets of it tonight, rehashed and analyzed on the evening news. Obama has been portrayed favorably by the Israeli media, but lately, perhaps parroting the siege mentality of the new right-wing government, the media has attacked the White House for being too insistent on freezing Jewish settlement activity in the Palestinian territories, which the White House sees as vital ...

— Quoting from the Quran for emphasis, President Barack Obama called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims" Thursday and said together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe and advance the timeless search for peace in the Middle East. "This cycle of suspicion and discord must end," Obama said in a widely anticipated speech in one of the world's largest Muslim countries, an address designed to reframe relations after ...

President Barack Obama spoke of the tensions Thursday between the United States and Muslims saying " the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. "Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view ...

Winning the hearts and minds of a majority of people is a nearly impossible feat, especially when you're a politician. And it's even harder when religion is involved, namely Islam, which some estimates put at 1 billion followers. But President Obama looks to do just that Thursday as he delivers what the White House is billing as a major speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. Obama hopes to start "a new chapter of engagement" between the United ...

Languishing in a Cairo prison last year, a prisoner noticed that every day, the prison staff would clean the adjacent cell, even though there was no one in it. Why, the prisoner asked his guards, did they do it It's for Barack Obama, they responded. Because when he loses the election, he'll surely be thrown in jail, so this way, a cell will be ready for him. Every day, the prisoner said, he prayed in his cell that Obama would ...

President Obama travels to the Middle East on Tuesday in an effort to repair a damaged U.S. image -- and seemingly reset relations with the Muslim world. It's a process that has been in the works since his first week in office. "My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect," Obama said in a January ...

An Egyptian business tycoon and a former police officer have been found guilty of last July's slaying of a rising Lebanese pop singer. The case, with its high-profile victim and defendant, has captivated Egypt and the region. A judge convicted and sentenced to death real estate mogul Hisham Talaat Moustafa and the former officer Muhsen el Sukkari on Thursday. Egypt's Grand Mufti -- the country's highest religious official -- will review the sentence and rule on June 25 ...

On May 21, after a trial that captivated the Arab world for nearly seven months, Egyptian multimillionaire Hisham Talaat Moustafa was sentenced to death for hiring a hitman to kill Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. The pop star, with whom Moustafa had been romantically involved, was found mutilated in her Dubai apartment last July. The dramatic sentencing, which spurred a scuffle between reporters and Moustafa's relatives in a Cairo courtroom, capped one of the most sensational trials in Egypt's ...

An Egyptian business tycoon and a former police officer have been found guilty of the July slaying of rising Lebanese pop singer Suzanne Tamim. The case, with its high-profile victim and defendant, has captivated Egypt and the region. A judge convicted real estate mogul Hisham Talaat Moustafa and the former officer Muhsen el Sukkari on Thursday. He then sent the case to Egypt's Grand Mufti -- the country's highest religious official -- for sentencing. The Mufti is expected to make ...

No one should have been surprised that there was no meeting of minds between President Barack Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their inaugural summit on Monday. Although the two men proclaimed a shared commitment to having Israelis and Palestinians live in peace, their views on how to get there remain substantially at odds. Now, as Obama puts the finishing touches on a new peace plan to be unveiled shortly — perhaps when he addresses the Muslim ...