Obama's speech in Cairo has been praised and panned by the usual suspects on the web, yet there's an aspect that I haven't seen others comment on, but which stood out for me. That's the five places where Islam's tolerance is praised, for example:

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the inquisition.

Now, a Manichean dualist would say tolerance is a good thing - it's better than intolerance - but is tolerance what the world needs from Islam? Do women want to be tolerated by men? Do blacks want to be tolerated by whites? Do gays want to be tolerated by straights? I think tolerance is insufficent. If Islam wants to be part of the global village, it'll have to get along with everyone else, and not merely tolerate others.

Then there's the matter of what that tolerance actually entailed. In Cordoba, Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and Christians a yellow star. Is that level of tolerance acceptable?

And finally, there's a problem of basic correspondence with the facts. Cordoba was liberated (1236) centuries before the Inquisition (1478-1834) got started. If this was a self-proclaimed important speech, yet it was written without caring if it corresponds with the facts, what truthfulness can be attributed to it?

[Update: Google now has hundreds links to Spanish blogs for Obama, Cordoba and tolerancia. I didn't know about the pogroms of 1011 and 1391.]  ¶ 4:52 PM