What passes for progress.

• Author: Bayoumi, Moustafa
• Position: Middle East and United States foreign relations - Critical essay

Engaging the Muslim World

By Juan Cole

Palgrave Macmillan. 288 pages. $26.95.

Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East

By Rashid Khalidi

Beacon. 308 pages. $25.95.

"W e are looking forward to hearing if Obama's speech today has substance," an American friend who teaches in Cairo wrote me the day of President Obama's June address to the world's Muslims. "Sadly, even without substance, it probably will still be a step forward."

Such is the state of relations between the United States and the Middle East, where our new American President felt compelled twice, once in Turkey and again in Cairo, to utter these most basic words: "America is not--and never will be--at war with Islam."

Hey, at least we American Muslims are glad to know we don't have to be at war with ourselves now!

It's depressing what passes for progress these days, the last eight years having soured international relations so. More than anything, the success Obama had with his Cairo speech reflects the desire for a new way forward.

You can't overestimate how hated George W. Bush was in the Middle East. Just before Obama's inauguration, the popular Egyptian poet Farouk Guweida composed an angry litany to Bush called "Carry Your Shame and Go!" Egyptian television aired a video of Guweida reciting his poem over a bleak montage of war imagery from the last eight years. The video, which played frequently, tapped into the feelings of the majority of the region's people, who feel abused by an arrogant Western power and are tired of war and violence.

So, they cheered Obama in Cairo.

It's not only the Middle East that wants to restart relations. Here in the United States, a whopping 81 percent of Americans polled in April felt that it is important for the President to "improve U.S. relations with Muslim nations." (It's not all roses. The same poll found that 48 percent of Americans hold an "unfavorable opinion" of Islam--the highest number since the survey began in 2001.)

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Large majorities on all sides seek better relations. That's good news. Now, how do we get there?

Words can only do so much, and policies matter more. But even more fundamentally, basic knowledge is missing. Most Americans lack even an elementary understanding of Islam, and many don't know any Muslims. Meanwhile, poll after poll discovers that merely knowing a Muslim improves your image of Islam substantially.

Without that personal contact, the region seems more foreign and irrational and distant than ever.

It doesn't help that American policy in the Middle East is confused and contradictory, supporting elections in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia, questioning election results in Iran but not in Egypt (while not recognizing the results in the Palestinian Territories). It's a policy that calls on the Palestinians to renounce violence while the United States drops bombs from drones over the territory of Pakistan, an ally, where key parts of its military establishment support the Taliban, an enemy. The same...