It was a diplomatically choreographed presentation by the US President in Riyadh on Sunday. Perhaps with an overdose of semantic quibbling, Donald Trump was overly anxious to draw a fine distinction between the terms, “Muslim” and “Islamist”. Thus it was that he urged “Muslim countries” to take the lead in the fight against terrorism ~ a message that his predecessor had also regarded as pivotal to US policy. He has placed the onus fair and square, deftly abjuring the stridently antiIslamic rhetoric that had marked his campaign speeches. “This gathering is unique in the history of nations,” Trump said, speaking alongside the Saudi monarch, King Salman. “The nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this evil for you.

Muslim nations must be willing to take on the burden if we are going to defeat terrorism, to meet history’s great test and conquer extremism.” Markedly, there isn’t a single country in the Muslim bloc that has spelt out its response to the starryeyed presentation. It would be premature to speculate on whether Mr Trump will be able to mobilise Muslim countries against extremism given the rapid surge of ISIS and the Sunni-Shia conflict within.

Suffice it to register that the US President has played to the Saudi monarchist gallery close to 16 years after militants from the desert kingdom had perpetrated the horror of 9/11. He may even have been anxious to blunt the criticism against the exclusion of Saudi Arabia from the list of Muslim countries whose citizens are barred from stepping into the US. Small wonder that his address was punctuated with swipes at Iran, timed to coincide with the presidential election there. He has equated acts carried out by Iran with those masterminded by ISIS and Al Qaida ~ an oblique criticism of his predecessor who had preferred to maintain his distance from Riyadh, preferring instead to deal with Tehran.

On the surface, the attempted paradigm shift has been dramatic when contextualised with his signal of intent ~ to meet what he calls “history’s great test” by conquering extremism with the help of countries who have suffered most from it. Admittedly, there were more soundbytes than substance, but it shall be generally acknowledged that Sunday’s presentation was quite the most significant since he stepped into the Oval Office.

His tenor was delicately pitched, avoiding what the West has described as “cultural minefields”. Did President Trump envisage a latter-day Muslim coalition of the willing against extremism? At any rate, this is the critical message that he has conveyed to the world, most importantly the Western powers. However, the forging of the concert of Muslim countries has been left delightfully vague. And yet it was a watershed moment in regional history.