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Obama to Muslims
Last Wednesday, President Barack Hussein Obama (as he referred to himself) delivered a speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo. That speech was earlier heavily promoted by his staff (and in the remarks) as a “new beginning” in relations between the US and the Muslim world. This should be of great interest to Guyana (and indeed the rest of the world) not only because we have a significant Muslim population, but because the ruptured relations between the most powerful nation in the world and the billion-plus Muslim world community has hindered the quest for world peace and stability.
Accepting that a speech alone will not be sufficient to effectuate a turnaround in the relationship, President Obama’s soaring rhetoric went far beyond the usual superficial platitudes that had been spouted by his predecessors. Muslim listeners said they were struck by how skilfully President Obama appropriated religious, cultural and historical references in ways other American presidents had not. Even though he took pains to point out that he was a Christian, Mr Obama stressed his Muslim connections (his father and residence in Indonesia) as he quoted thrice from the Koran. In his now familiar nuanced fashion, Mr Obama offered seven “issues” actually goals that he felt the US and the Muslim world could pursue together as they worked to reduce “tensions” between them. The first was a rejection of, and willingness, “to confront …violent extremism in all its forms”. But his elaboration of pursuing Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan was received with stony silence by his audience – and one suspects by Muslims across the globe. The fulfilment of this goal is going to be problematical, not least because of the US expansive definition of its “security interests” as well that the same interpretation of “Jihad” by many Muslims.
The second issue was on the specific overriding concerns of the Mideast; President Obama reiterated his commitment to the “two state formula” for Israel and the Palestinians, but for the latter to renounce violence against Israel and the former to cease all new settlements. He accepted that the US incursion into Iraq might have been a mistake and stressed the imminent withdrawal of US troops. However, he debunked conspiracy theories on 9/11 and emphasised the US resoluteness to pursue Al Qaida into Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of this was new, but by situating it within a more realistic appraisal of America’s past complicity in creating the impasse and a refusal to pander the US’s strategically Israel, the US President offered hope that change might be on the way.
The third issue was on the spread of nuclear weapons where the Iranian aspirations in this area were defined by Mr Obama as leading to a dangerous “nuclear arms race”. This circumstance is not only of overweening concern to Israel, which is widely believed to have already decided to bomb the Iranian facilities, but also Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim states that view Shia Iran as competitors for regional hegemony. The President called for a nuclear-free-weapon world, might be seen as disingenuous.
As the fourth issue, Mr Obama on one hand rejected President Bush’s policy of “exporting democracy” but on the other, pronounced that the substantive contents of democracy – rule by and of the people, rule of law etc. – “sets a single standard for all who would hold power”.
Muslim political beliefs, which rest on the Sharia, and have different premises on the form and content of a state ,will certainly continue to test that project. The same holds true for the fifth and sixth issues of “religious freedom” and “women’s rights”: these also will prove problematical.
Finally, on the goal of “economic development and opportunity”, while President Obama conceded that “there need not be contradictions between development and tradition” and that “modernity” can challenge “identities, traditions and faith” the real issue, of course, that Muslims (and the rest of the world) centres on who will control the “economic development” that is subsumed under the omnibus term ‘globalisation” nowadays.
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