President Obama quote on Egyptian people

[thefrog5]

Hello, all,

There's an image making the rounds on Facebook and elsewhere online. It's a billboard with the following line:

“We must educate our children to become like young Egyptian people...”
President of the USA
Barack Obama

One site is here:
http://bodyontheline.wordpress.com/2...ings-in-egypt/

Another is an Ann Romney fan page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...levant_count=1

It appears to be a billboard paid for by the Egyptian mobile phone company Mobinil. Apparently, the billboard is or was visible at the Cairo airport.

This quote is being used by some to support the claim that President Obama wants to impose Sharia law in the U.S.

When I search for it, I cannot find any reliable source to confirm that the President actually said these words. A speech he made on the subject of the Egyptian revolution is available here:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/o...es/speech/559/

...but the quote is clearly not taken from that speech. My guess is that Mobinil or someone else misquoted or mistranslated the President.

Thoughts?

[Mr. Billion]

I can't find any speech with it either. American political sites using it to smear Obama mostly date to September 2012, but the quotation must be earlier than July 16 2012 when this video was posted citing the quotation as support for the Egyptian revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...cJ2G8td8#t=72s

The closest he's ever come to that phrase is this statement on May 22, 2010:

We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...t-commencement
...Which is totally unrelated.

You can search all the president's speeches here: http://search.whitehouse.gov/search/...=1&per_page=10

[E. Q. Taft]

He actually just said we must educate them to walk like Egyptian people. Us late Boomers, still stuck on the eighties music.

[1958Fury]

Ack, earworm.

[A Turtle Named Mack]

This newspaper link from 2011 claims Obama said it, but it does not give where and when.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1035/sc241.htm

My guess would be that something got passed through translation several times. It would not be surprising to have Obama saying something praising the protests that brought down the Mubarak regime, and if not this precisely, through translations have it come out something like this.