All fathers and mothers, in all societies, want their children to be educated, and live free from poverty and violence. No people on Earth yearn to be oppressed, or aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police.
If anyone doubts this, let them look to Afghanistan, where the Islamic "street" greeted the fall of tyranny with song and celebration. Let the skeptics look to Islam's own rich history, with its centuries of learning, and tolerance and progress. America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. (Applause.)
As far as I can tell, this is a reference to Islam's past, which was sometimes better than its present. It was quite different from the "Islam means peace" business. I think some of the criticism from people like Dan Pipes that the President has no business setting up as an Islamic theologian has gotten through.
In context, he was not so much praising Islam as proclaiming the universality of the principles of liberty and justice - you know, those "self-evident truths". That is an appropriate job for the president. He was saying that these liberty and justice are relevant to all people, they aren't just western cultural constructs, and that means Muslims too, and if you doubt it, look at the celebration of the end of tyrrany in Kabul and look back at the best days of Islam.
In any event, I don't think that that one sentence constitutes "effervescent praise" of Islam. I don't believe it's possible, actually, to effervesce in one sentence.