RSS Feed MenuThe president’s Cairo speech: worse than feared. Let’s itemize the ways.
President Obama likes to position himself as an intermediary, explaining two conflicting parties each to the other. He did so in his race speech in Philadelphia, he did so when he spoke about abortion at Notre Dame.
In Cairo, he took a similar position between the United States and the Islamic world. He urged Americans to take a positive view of Islam, and urged Muslims to take a positive view of the United States.
But whereas in Philadelphia and Notre Dame Obama was explaining two groups of Americans to each other, in Cairo he exhibited the amazing spectacle of an American president taking an equidistant position between the country he leads and its detractors and enemies. It is as if he saw himself as a judge in some legal dispute, People of the Islamic World v. United States. But the job to which he was elected was not that of impartial judge, but that of leader and champion of the American nation.
The president said: “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”
The same principle? Shouldn’t an American president feel an attachment to his own country above all? Shouldn’t misrepresentations aimed against that country energize him more?
And yet the tone of this speech suggested that if anything, such misrepresentations energize him rather less. Listen to this passage:
I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
Well yes, they are facts. But they are also something more: They are wrongs done on a massive scale to the United States by people acting in the name of Islam, wrongs condoned, endorsed and excused by many in the Islamic world. When addressing grievances expressed by some Muslims, the president spoke understandingly and sympathetically.
[T]ension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.
When speaking of the wrongs done to the United States by people acting in the name of Islam, however, the president mentioned nothing but the bare fact. To that subject, he brought no emotion at all.
* * *
Next problem.
The president addressed – surprisingly briefly – the issue of the rights of women in the Islamic world. This is not a small issue, now that the Islamic world extends into Europe and America. Women in cities like London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Oslo face mounting threats not only to their freedom, but even to their physical safety, from men who deploy violence in the name of Islam. Nor is it only Muslim-born women at risk.
Now listen to the president:
I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.
But it is not only “some in the West” who take this view! It is many Muslim-born women themselves, some of whom live in the West – but others of whom live in Muslim-majority countries. What on earth is an American president doing taking sides on this internal question of Islamic practice?
What’s next – a speech in Jerusalem where the president says, “I reject the view of some in the West that chicken is not a ‘meat’ for kosher purposes?” A speech in Vatican City where the president endorses clerical celibacy?
Such interventions within Judaism and Christianity would obviously be unthinkable. Yet here is an American president intervening in an internal Muslim debate – and not only intervening, but intervening on the more reactionary side!
* * *
The risk with this speech from the beginning was that the president would turn his back on the people in the Muslim world who most admire Western freedom – and who most need our understanding and support.
The president:
[I]t is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
These words are a slap at the government of France, which restricts the wearing of hijab in schools. Yet polls show that a large majority of French teachers support the ban. Possibly these teachers are all bigots. But possibly also they understand that hijab is frequently compelled upon girls – not only by their families – but by the youth gangs that patrol French suburban neighborhoods enforcing Islamic conformity on those who might wish to escape.
Islam is not a monolith, we are often told. And that is true! The Islamic world is also the home of Dr Younus Shaikh, a Pakistani scholar charged with blasphemy for stating that Islam did not exist before Muhammad. (Muslim orthodoxy holds that Islam was the original religion of mankind, followed by Adam in the Garden of Eden.)
The Islamic world is the home of the terrorized young gays of Iran. It is the home of Saudi women who want to drive. Did the president have anything to say to them?
No, no, and no. For all the speech’s reasonable tone, it persistently treats the more traditionalist elements within Islamic societies – and the Islamic diaspora – as the more authentic and important.
* * *
One of the most disturbing things about the Cairo speech is the persistent misrepresentation of history.
It is really absurd to say that Islam for example has “always been a part of America’s story.”
It is something worse than absurd to use a speech on Islam to apologize for America’s part in the overthrow of the Mossadeq regime in Iran in 1953. Mossadeq was a secular nationalist, passionately opposed by Iran’s religious establishment. That establishment finally seized power for itself in 1979, and since then it has made a martyr of Mossadeq. For the United States to apologize to the present Iranian regime for the overthrow of Mossadeq would be a little like President Eisenhower apologizing to Josef Stalin for the murder of Trotsky. Agreed, we didn’t much like Trotsky – but Stalin is not the man to receive that apology, and neither are the mullahs the people to receive an apology for the events of 1953. President Obama would have done better to publish the amount of CIA money the ayatollahs collected in return for opposing Mossadeq!
(By the way, it is misleading to describe the Mossadeq regime as “democratically elected.” At the time of his overthrow, Mossadeq had suspended elections and was ruling by emergency decree.)
Throughout the president’s speech, he takes pains to admit and ratify the validity of complaints against the West. This no doubt strikes Obama as a clever piece of ju-jitsu: a harmless concession that opens the way to dialogue and détente.
But what it also does is cut the ground out from under those liberal Muslims and Arabs who reject a victimological approach to their own history. Many of the worst elements in the Islamic world tell a one-sided history that denies or excuses the victimization of others and that throws all blame for frustrations and disappointments upon outsiders. That version of history now commands the assent of an American president. And while he may regard his concessions as empty compliments, they will carry ominous meaning for many who struggle for the freedom to narrate a more honest history.
* * *
Turn now to the speech’s policy implications. They range from the troubling to the alarming.
Here’s one troubling point:
In cooperation with American allies, the Bush administration squeezed the flow of money to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Hamas front groups were shut down, and their leaders prosecuted.
Now listen to President Obama:
For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.
It is not at all hard for American Muslims to give to legitimate charities. What has been made difficult is giving to terror groups. Is the president suggesting he will relax those restrictions?
Another ominous hint. The president invoked a future moment
when Jerusalem is a … place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.
But it is already true that Jerusalem is open to prayer for all faiths, Muslims very much included. That’s very different from the situation before 1967, when Jews were excluded and Jewish cemeteries were vandalized.
Is the president denying that reality? Is he opening the door to an internationalization of Israel’s capital city?
Eli Lake of the Washington Times reported last month that President Obama would put the Israeli nuclear arsenal on the table as part of his attempt to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. This speech appears to confirm that alarming intention as well:
I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.
Finally, this: the president devoted almost one-fifth of his speech to the Arab Israeli conflict. This section contains much that is familiar and much that is positive. The president’s words on the immorality and futility of terrorism achieved eloquence:
It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
On the other hand, his analogy between the situation of the Palestinians and American slavery should deeply offend African-Americans. Africans did not find themselves in bondage on American soil because of wars they started. They were never given the opportunity to achieve their emancipation via negotiated settlement. They were not impoverished because their leaders stole billions of dollars of donated aid.
From the point of view of America’s international interests, it was hardly wise to accede to the claim that America’s relationship with Muslims worldwide should depend on America’s ability to deliver a viable, functioning Palestinian state. What happens if, after the president’s fine words, six years from now finds the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians more or less as it is today? If the Palestinian Authority governs just as fecklessly and corruptly and Hamas opts to remain a radical and violent pariah? The words of this grandiloquent speech could then return to haunt not only this supremely confident president – but the country for which he speaks.
InTheMiddle12 // Jun 5, 2009 at 4:48 am
joescannura: The reason women where hijab in the Mosque is for the same reason women where hats at Westminster Abbey, it’s to respect the spiritual tradition of the house of worship in which they stand. There is no difference. Your answer reflects the point I was trying to make, that many on the right have a very narrow view of the world and its cultures and norms.Thankfully President Obama’s administration is restoring Americans larger view of the world and bringing back respect for those outside the mainstream American view. If the President was entereing a Jewish synagogue I would expect him to wear a yarmuka, as a show of respect. The Judeo-Christian view is one view in America. America is also made up of Buddhists, Muslims and a myriad of other faiths. I’m grateful I live in America because it’s one of,a few nations on earth that is ruled by secular laws that separates church and state that allows everyone freedom of religion.
InTheMiddle12 // Jun 5, 2009 at 4:49 am
sorry. The reason women WEAR hijab…
balconesfault // Jun 5, 2009 at 4:54 am
“If the President was entereing a Jewish synagogue I would expect him to wear a yarmuka, as a show of respect.” As I posted before:http://houston.indymedia.org/uploads/2005/06/bush_wall.jpgI wonder if this offended joe.
sinz54 // Jun 5, 2009 at 6:33 am
InTheMiddle12: The reason why so many women in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan wear hijab, is that their husbands or fathers would beat them to a pulp if they didn’t. That’s also the case among many Muslim immigrants to Europe.Surveys have shown that an amazing 85% of Pakistani wives report being beaten by their husbands–far higher than in any Western nation.I have no problem with a woman choosing to wear anything–if it’s of her own choice.But among many fundamentalist Muslims, women are supposed to be quiet and do as they’re told.
sinz54 // Jun 5, 2009 at 6:48 am
Oh, one more thing: Many of these Muslim women don’t just wear hijab. They are forced to wear niqab.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muslim_woman_in_Yemen.jpgYou really think all these Muslim women *prefer* to walk around that way?
balconesfault // Jun 5, 2009 at 7:54 am
“You really think all these Muslim women *prefer* to walk around that way?”All? No way.This cultural stuff is brutally hard. There are things that we can all agree are wrong – female circumcision, beating, honor killings of rape victims. Next, there’s a layer that is more a matter of cultural mores – the hijab, the niqab, the length of skirts, prohibition on showing cleavage. Used to be bathing suits for women here. Then you have legal provisions which clearly prejudice against women – in the US, we even had to amend our Constitution to eliminate the residue of disenfranchisement of females. Access to education, property rights, right to hold office, etc all fall in there.What the heck – we could also add reproductive rights in there.I know what my own preferences are – and there are a considerable number of Americans who disagree with me over many of them. It’s inevitable that I’ll disagree even more with the majority of people in some countries that have completely different cultures.What’s the point? I liked Obama’s tone. You point out to people that universally, increased rights for women is directly correlated with economic and intellectual progress.I don’t think that stronger words to countries to improve their women’s rights records are best delivered at the diplomatic level, rather than in speeches like yesterday. Our Presidents job in international affairs is to promote our security and trade … not to be an international scold.Although he could offer to send them Ann Coulter: “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.”
Bulldoglover100 // Jun 5, 2009 at 8:29 am
Sadly David you have come to sound like the right wing nut jobs in our party. You appear to have no qualms about distorting to make your point, you have no problem putting politics in front of what could very well turn out to be a great step forward for our country and you, sadly, seem to gain joy (or another guest spot on cable news) from sounding like a paniced girl on a sinking ship when Obama does anything that might, just might, make the Dems look good.Was the speech perfect? Nope. Did i agree with all of it? Nope but the difference between children and people like you and Palin? Adults hear the whole and not the parts. They take away from what was intended. World peace someday if everyone would work together.I did not hear this screaming and wetting of pants from you and the other dill weeds when Reagan say to Tear Down that Wall……far from it but let a Democratic President attempt the same thing? and you wizz your pants. Why?
ottovbvs // Jun 5, 2009 at 8:29 am
The inability to see the wood for the trees by Frum and most of the far right posters here says a lot more about them than it does about Obama or the message he was delivering. Every word, gesture, polite aside is deconstructed to find slights or pegs on which to hang attacks on him. We’ve got the Barbery pirates; someone urging Clinton to disregard Muslim religious good manners who would be doubtless be shocked if I went into church wearing a hat; we even have some fruitcake called Rosenthal at another diary whining because Obama didn’t correctly classify Buchenwald as a Nazi death camp because only 11,000 jews were murdered there. If these folks got any smaller they’d be invisible. I’ve actually read a few comments from neocons about this speech and there seems to be a bit of divide opening up between the real ultras like Frum who are intent in creating mountains out of trivia and others like Boot who while not liking parts of it and whining about equivalency recognize it was actually a fairly formidable performance that has overall probably advanced the national interests of the US and that at the end of the day this is desirable.
joescannura // Jun 5, 2009 at 8:37 am
This is so dumb. how can you come on here and be apologists for these stupid ancient crackpots who just want to control women and dominate them. the women can say it’s OK with them, and that there fine with the tradition, but that doesn’t change the reason that it was created. I want you to tell me with a straight face that the women in Westminster Abbey wear hats because there body’s are not to be shown in public. Cause if that’s why it’s done, than OK, our diplomats shouldn’t do that either. But if it isn’t, which i don’t suspect it is, than it’s just a tradition of wearing a hat. You guys must really feel very “sensitive” to other cultures, i know, but get over it already and take a deep breadth in the real world. This is your problem, you think your coming on here and being smarter about other cultures than some redneck, but I’m no redneck, and your just sounding like dumb apologists.Cultural things aren’t brutally hard. you find out what they mean, what is there purpose, and you decide if you respect it or not. You don’t act like some flimsy moral relativist, and say that everything is OK for everybody if that’s how they want to live. Take a stand for once.and kippah’s are worn by everybody in synagogues you idiots. Men and women cover there heads in some fashion. I didn’t see anyone forcing the President to put something on his head. That’s cause he’s a man, and not a woman. Wow, you guys really aren’t as smart as you think you are.
ottovbvs // Jun 5, 2009 at 9:02 am
joescannura wrote 18 minutes ago”Cultural things aren’t brutally hard. you find out what they mean, what is there purpose, and you decide if you respect it or not.”……..This from someone who would be the first to scream if “his” cultural shibboleths were offended. Americans are great people with many admirable qualities but having the ability to put themselves in the shoes of others isn’t one of them I’m afraid. It’s really hard to fathom the obtuseness anyone who could say “Cultural things aren’t brutally hard.”
dendup // Jun 5, 2009 at 3:26 pm
David your last paragraph begs the question – do you think the 2 state solution is in our interests? If not quit beating around the Bush and say so. If you do think so, isn’t this speech at least a reasonable start – and isn’t that what’s important here?Of course it carries risk – show us a possible solution that doesn’t.
joescannura // Jun 5, 2009 at 3:29 pm
ottovbvsThere not. read a book, ask someone who lives there about them. that’s hard? What’s hard about finding out about other people’s and country’s cultures? I don’t have stupid myths or clothing that I expect people to conform to when they come from another country. I don’t expect women to cover up there bodies or people to put cloth on there head for my sake.Look, cling to moral relativism all you want, cow tow to misogyny and superstition, but you won’t see me doing it.If you can’t even make a judgment on issues or things people say, other than to say there too judgmental, why even have an opinion. Just accept everything people do. There’s nothing wrong with mistreatment of women in the Mid East. Honor killings? big woop. Being killed because you were raped? big deal. shooting a woman because she’s unchaperoned in a car? feel free. jeez, get a grip man.
ottovbvs // Jun 5, 2009 at 4:24 pm
joescannura wrote 48 minutes ago…..Be happy in your one dimensional world…..Graham Greene had exactly you in mind….Fortunately for the sake of the country we have an admin that’s capable of thinking in four and doesn’t think we can impose our view of the world on everyone else however benign it may be.
InTheMiddle12 // Jun 5, 2009 at 5:04 pm
The true Conservative position is to allow soverign nations to be and do what they wish, period. There is no doubt that women are oppressed in many Muslim majority countries and it is find to discuss the issues and bring those to light. When it comes down to it, however, it is NOT America’s place to affect change beyond allowing the press to cover it and the government to comment on it.This whole misbegotten Neo-Con drive to force democracy and jam down the throats what they perceive of the way to live has failed so badly, it’s pathetic.Yet, we still are reading the death throws of those that haven’t come to realize it was a terrible failure. And it was a terrible failure because it violated every CONSERVATIVE principle America had grown to deeply hold dear, that we DO NOT INVADE a soverign nation unless attacked first. And I’m so tired of trying to get through to these what is now ‘living in the past’ philosophizers.
joescannura // Jun 5, 2009 at 5:44 pm
ottovbsit doesn’t have much to do with “imposing” on others. Is saying something is wrong “imposing” it? I guess by your standards it is. Your problem is you simply can’t make any judgment at all. EVER. nothing you’ve said indicates any opinion on the issue, other than it is what it is. If a president is going to speak on the issues, why not give a judgment. Not just say let them wear the hijabs. You can wear whatever you want, but the guy can’t even take a stand. He’s a relativist just like it seems most of his supporters are. You’ll sit and whine and cry over the fate of the world, but do nothing, not even say anything, about it. If that’s a “four dimensional view”, he and you can have it. Orwell was right about people like you, that those on the left had an affinity towards communism and fascism.just like the communist graham greene. I guess you support and don’t have anything negative to say about castro or cuba, right? they can just live however they want to live. we won’t say a word. lock up dissidents, no free speech, who cares. Is this a serious position to take? how can you be so sacrosanct while talking so stupidly?
sinz54 // Jun 6, 2009 at 7:33 am
joescannura & InTheMiddle12: I want all American Presidents to speak out for freedom and liberty, both here and abroad. That’s a role that only nations with a true long history of freedom–like America, Britain, and the Netherlands–can play.It helps put our totalitarian enemies on the psychological defensive, and can be a powerful weapon in the war of ideas. During the Cold War, just about all Presidents did this. It was necessary to battle the meme that Soviet-controlled media was putting out, that the U.S. was a dying fascist-imperialist aggressor that was heading for the collapse predicted (incorrectly, as it turned out) by Marx.Unlike the Cold War, however, the American President cannot take on the religious aspect of these Islamist regimes–that’s proscribed by our First Amendment. He can’t say to the Iranian regime, “My reading of the Quran differs from yours,” any more than he could criticize the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories on the grounds that “My reading of the Torah differs from yours.”I wouldn’t even mind covert aid to democratic opposition forces. In the past, the U.S. sent covert aid to the Solidarity Movement in Poland–that was a big win. And President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law, which allowed for covert aid to opposition forces seeking to overthrow Saddam.But that’s as far as we can or should go.
Patrick // Jun 6, 2009 at 5:26 pm
It’s no wonder that we make so little progress in relations with the Muslim world.What Muslim women wear (or don’t wear) shouldn’t even be in the vocabulary until after we have a relationship based on trust and mutual interests.When idiots start shrieking about hijab’s *before* we have anything close to resembling a working relationship, they are hurting more than they are helping.
On America’s Muslim problem: I « The Moor Next Door // Jan 10, 2010 at 1:48 am
[...] David Frum, for instance, called those lines “really absurd” and characterized it as a part of the speech’s “persistent misrepresentation of history.” Max Boot, in a Commentary blog post, wrote that the line “twisted history”. Frum did not explain how Islam (or Muslims) have not been a part of the “American story” — he dismisses the idea in one line — though his assumption likely comes from old narratives on American history and identity. Or ideology. Boot’s quarrel was more with an example used in Obama’s speech, related to the often quoted 1798 Treaty of Tripoli, than the line itself; Obama’s use of the Treaty was actually somewhat off, a good example of a historical document being distorted for political purposes. There were innumerable examples the President could have used; out of all context, though, that particular Treaty is especially useful. Again, so long as it is out of context. That is the poverty of the Obama administration’s trumped up outreach to Muslims: Months after the Cairo sermon, one cannot imagine Barack Obama addressing American Muslims at, say, the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. The lack of perspective and courage in much of the President’s outreach to the Muslim world and Muslim community in the United States produces such errors and others. The President shares that with men like Frum and Boot and Douthat, too. America and American Muslims need a stronger focus and broader perspective on American Islam. Men who stand before the public should see the bigger picture; but thought may be a tragedy of hope. [...]