"Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality." -- President Obama, Cairo, June 4, 2009

Critics complain that Obama's description of Islamic history in Cairo was an historically erroneous pander, but the President's defenders have an answer: the speech was not meant to describe actual truths but to create future possibilities. It was about pushing the "re-set button" on US/Islamic relations.

The President believes that if the West changes its posture toward "the Islamic world" then our two civilizations can come closer. I imagine this implies that there will be movement on both sides - he did after all allude to Islam's women problem. So as the West, in Obama's words "unclenches its fist" it is hoped that Muslim regimes too will reform their practices most at odds with Western civilization, namely the orthodox Islamic treatment of women, gays, and apostates, and religious and racial minorities.

It was with just such a hope for change that John Eibner, just back from the borderlands of Southern Sudan and Darfur, wrote to the President about Sudan's black slaves held by Muslim masters. Eibner, head of Christian Solidarity International's US branch, explained that slavery still persists in Sudan, the result of a decades-old Islamic "holy war" waged by Khartoum's Islamist regime against the mostly Christian South Sudanese. Eibner wrote to ask President Obama to unblock the stalled US effort to free the slaves.

Eibner rehearsed US diplomatic history: He explained that in 2000, Susan Rice, then Assistant Sec., currently Obama's Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice - was so moved by the stories of freed slaves she met in Sudan that she initiated a US policy to eradicate slavery there. Six months later, Special Envoy, Senator John Danforth established an American mission to report to President Bush on slavery in Sudan. An "eminent persons" group was to establish a Sudanese institute for locating, liberating and repatriating slaves.

Sudan resisted and this never materialized, but in 2007 a bi-partisan Congressional group (including our own Barney Frank) proposed legislation to establish a US "Commission to Monitor Slavery and its Eradication in Sudan," but this failed to advance to Committee.

There are, according to Sudan's own Committee to Eradicate Abduction of Women and Children, over 35,000 Black Africans from the Dinka tribe enslaved today. Most are held by Muslim masters in Darfur and close-by Kordofan. Eibner's group continues its decades' long work of freeing slaves in Sudan. In his letter he included photos and brief bios of some of the freed slaves, all forcibly converted to Islam.

Achan Guat, a pregnant 17 year old -- enslaved, raped, circumcised. Mary Atak Baak - 18 years old, enslaved, abused. Peter Dut Hol, 19 years old, enslaved, mutilated. Majik Ko, 17 years old, enslaved and blinded in one eye.

Let us hope that President Obama acts to help free the slaves. It would mean promoting universal standards of human rights in the Muslim realm, and would help create a truly meaningful "re-set button."