cc Following Barack Obama’s 4 June speech in Cairo, Algerian secularist Marieme Helie Lucas doesn’t think the president’s discourse is the new voice of peace. Critical of Obama’s idea of homogenous civilisations and his equating of civilisation with religion, Lucas argues that by essentialising Islam and ignoring the large differences that exist among Muslim believers themselves, Obama feeds into the plans of Muslim fundamentalists who claim that there is one single Islam. Obama does not raise the issue of who defines culture, who defines religion or who speaks for 'the Muslims', says Lucas. Instead, he talks to religions rather than citizens, nations or countries. By assuming that everyone has to have a religion, he leaves no place for those who choose ‘not to have religion as their main marker of identity’ and overlooks the fact that in many instances ‘people are forced into religious identities’, Lucas contends.