Alternet:

Change: “…he also spoke of a knowledge deficit about Islam in the U.S. and the West, and said that “we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”
Obama intends to DISTANCE himself from the policies of his predecessor, the wildly UNPOPULAR George W. Bush, and present a new image to the Muslim and Arab worlds. 

SEE: http://www.alternet.org/world/140444/bush_left_america’s_standing_in_the_mideast_at_rock_bottom_–_can_obama_turn_it_around_in_cairo/

From McClatchy:

CAIRO — President Barack Obama, courting Muslims internationally, said Thursday that the United States does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory and that “just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.”

In a speech he conceived well before his election last November, aimed at repositioning U.S. standing in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq war, and drafted with the help of prominent Muslim-Americans, Obama told an audience at Cairo University that “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”

The relationship, he said, should be founded on mutual interests and respect and “the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”

see: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/