Saudi King Salman and US President Donald Trump arrive at the Arab Islamic American Summit, at the King Abdulaziz Conference Centre, on Sunday. Credit:AP "This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people, all in the name of religion. People want to protect life and want to protect their religion. This is a battle between good and evil." Beneath the sparkling chandeliers of the King Abdulaziz International Conference Centre, Trump called for the "foot soldiers of evil" to be purged. He urged the leaders: "Drive them out. Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. And drive them out of this earth." Just as Barack Obama chose the Egyptian capital Cairo for a speech early in his presidency that was intended to reset Washington's relationship with the Arab world, Trump picked Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, for another American reset – but also, given his past rhetoric, a very personal reset. The leaders in his audience had to do more to combat terrorism, but Trump would not be hectoring them, as Obama had, on human rights. "We're not here to lecture. We're not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship. Instead, we're here to offer partnership, based on shared interests and values.

Donald Trump delivers his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Seated from left, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Ivanka Trump and her husband senior adviser Jared Kushner. Credit:AP "We are adopting a principled realism, rooted in common values, shared interests and common sense… The [US will] make decisions based on real-world outcomes, not inflexible ideology – wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms, not sudden intervention." This is Trump's first venture abroad as president – after Saudi Arabia, he travels to Israel and the West Bank, to Rome and other points in Europe. The Riyadh, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Rome stopovers are billed ambitiously by the White House as a bid to "broadcast a message of unity" to Jews, Christians and Muslims. President Donald Trump listens during a ceremony to mark the opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh on Sunday. Credit:AP "What President Trump is seeking is to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress and prosperity," his National Security Adviser HR McMaster said in scene-setting briefings for reporters ahead of the trip – no small feat for a man who has been accused of anti-Semitisms and Islamophobia and has locked horns with the Pope.

In that context the Riyadh speech was keenly awaited. U.S. President Donald Trump, right, holds a bilateral meeting with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on Sunday. Credit:AP "Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: barbarism will deliver you no glory - piety to evil will bring you no dignity," Trump offered. "If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned." But for all the White House prepping on what has been described as a pirouette by Trump away from the stridency of his campaign rhetoric, much of it attributed to aides no longer on his staff or whose wings have been clipped, when it came to three critical words, the president stumbled. President Donald Trump talks with Saudi King Salman as they pose for photos with leaders at the Arab Islamic American Summit. Credit:AP

We're talking about "radical Islamic extremism". A cornerstone of Trump's election campaign was Obama's refusal to utter those words. Pre-released excerpts of the Riyadh speech revealed that the White House had come up with a new, halfway house – "Islamist extremism" – which is more narrowly focused on terrorist ideology than on all followers of one of the world's major religions. But as he often does, Trump veered from his script, using both words – "Islamic" and Islamist". "That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds," he said, leaving unclear if he had merely stumbled; or, with a wary eye on core supporters at home who had cheered his anti-Muslim stump speeches, he was deliberately ignoring the plea of McMaster and others for greater subtlety.

"The president will call it whatever he wants to call it," McMaster told ABC News ahead of the speech. "But I think it's important that, whatever we call it, we recognise that these are not religious people and, in fact, these enemies of all civilisations, what they want to do is to cloak their criminal behaviour under this false idea of some kind of religious war." Obama, and George W Bush before him, had taken the position that terrorists had perverted Islam – not that Islam was terrorist. In the 2016 campaign, Obama berated Trump for "yapping…fall[ing] into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply[ing] that we are at war with an entire religion, [thereby] doing the terrorists' work for them". At the time, Trump countered that "anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country" – and he pointedly used the phrase "radical Islamic extremism" in his inauguration address. Saudi officials seemingly were happy to go along with Trump's implicit invitation that his past rhetoric be forgotten – including his 2016 Facebook stab of the kingdom for keeping "women as slaves and kill[ing] gays" and his suggestions that Riyadh might have been complicit in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Insisting Saudi Arabia was committed to "fighting all forms of terrorism", King Salman of Saudi Arabia said: "We say to our Muslim brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters everywhere, that one of the most important goals of Islamic sharia is protecting life, and there is no honour in committing murder.

"Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance." As Trump had, Salman focused on Iran as the regional bogyman, branding it as a terrorist state. "These odious acts are the products of attempts to exploit Islam as a cover for political purposes to flame hatred, extremism, terrorism and religious and sectarian conflicts." The Riyadh speeches will percolate in the region and around the globe world. But the juxtaposition of two related matters were proof that this is an imperfect world. As vote counting confirmed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's reelection on Saturday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a press conference in Riyadh that Washington hoped Tehran would "restore the rights of Iranians to freedom of speech, to freedom of organisation, so that Iranians can live the life that they deserve". Standing beside Tillerson was Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, whose government denies its citizens the same rights – and ranks more poorly than Iran on the Washington-based Freedom House's Freedom in the World index.

Asked if he had anything to say about human rights in Saudi Arabia, Tillerson simply walked away. Loading And it was revealed that last week Riyadh had helped thwart a move by Washington to impose sanctions on the Saudi branch of IS, killing a bid to add the branch to a UN list of terrorist groups. Why? The Saudis objected to any public acknowledgement that IS operated in the kingdom, despite the group claiming responsibility for a series of attacks, including a suicide bombing at a Saudi mosque that killed 15 people in 2015.