I was not keen on Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo last Thursday. Not interested, was how I felt. I resented not so much the honey-filled words that would inevitably sweeten the speech for our palates but the sheer fact that this speech was considered necessary. It’s the idea of a hostile Muslim world that needs to be placated that I am hostile to. And one step further, the idea that hostility can be placated by a beautifully delivered speech.
What an old cynic I have become. I was not interested, I thought of many other things I could do that seemed far more worthwhile than listening to an hour-long speech by the president of the United States of America, but I listened anyway. My duty demanded it.
Within seconds of the speech starting I found I had goose pimples.
What is it about hearing a US president say the words “Assalamu Alaikum” that is so irresistibly powerful? Is it hearing him speak a couple of words of Arabic? Or is it simply that those words that Muslims utter when they enter a home or cross any other threshold encompass all that has been missing from international relations in recent years?
For talk of peace is abundant. It is so common to speak of searching for peace, of brokering peace, of being peace-loving, of yearning for peace, of the need for a lasting peace, etc... The permutations are endless, but what you hear so seldom is the will behind that phrase, namely, simply wishing peace upon the other. Assalamu Alaikum is what has been missing on all sides of the divide, if indeed there is a divide.
I resent the idea of a divide because it splits into East and West, or Muslims and Americans in the case of Obama’s speech. And yet as he pointed out, there are over seven million Muslims living in the US.
It’s even worse on the other so-called side. The Us and Them sometimes bears such venom and is being worn down into increasingly smaller circles. Witness the increasing differentiation between Shiites and Sunnis for instance, when we could all simply regard each other as Muslims.
Perhaps not so much a cynic as an idealist. I found myself moved by Obama’s speech because he spoke what I thought only more eloquently. I did not agree with everything he said, of course, and as always the omissions are often more interesting that what is actually said. He could have condemned Israel more forcefully rather than speak of “the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza” as if it was some accident of history and not something arising as a direct result of the actions of the State of Israel. But credit to him, he went quite far — for an American president — in condemning Israeli settlements and was forceful in his call for a two-state solution.
He called on Palestinians to abandon violence — a call I support — but what of Israeli violence? That was not acknowledged, not directly in any case. But sometimes images are more powerful. In calling for Palestinians to abandon violence, he indirectly compared their plight to that of black people, by pointing out that “for centuries in America black people suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation.” The point he was making was that equal rights for black people were achieved not by violence but by peaceful means. So, are Palestinians the black people of Israel in Obama’s eyes? Are they the victims of segregation and violence living beneath the yoke of Israeli occupation?
What I was most thankful for in his speech was the sole use of the word extremists to describe terrorists. Al-Qaeda were either called by their name or described as “violent extremists.” He did not use the abominable term “Islamists” or refer to “Islamic extremists” as some do. If nothing else, just understanding that the extremists are not a part of Islam but people who usurp the name of Islam for political and violent ends is in itself a huge step forward in relations between the US and the Muslim world.
Had I been in Cairo I too would have given him a standing ovation. But once I sat down again and recovered my emotions, I would have remembered that it is just a speech and that unless it is backed by action it is nothing but skillful illusion.
