Let's be friends

Barack Obama speaks in Cairo

Let's be friends
Jun 4th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

Barack Obama delivers a convincing speech to Muslims around the world

 

“WE AWAIT your arrival impatiently because we admire your noble principles and lofty virtues,” gushed an open letter from Sheikh Ali Yusuf, a Muslim cleric who, long ago, was Egypt’s most popular columnist. Printed in an Arabic daily, it went on to express hope that in his speech at Cairo University, the American president would show support for Egyptian aspirations to freedom and dignity.

 

Those words were penned 99 years ago in advance of a lecture by Theodore Roosevelt, an American president whose imperialist tone then sourly disappointed Egyptian hopes. But now the long-dead sheikh may rest reassured. In a rousing speech on Thursday June 4th Barack Obama used the magnifying force of the American presidency, his own charisma and a podium at the heart of the Arab world to address the concerns of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Speaking at Cairo University, he sought to project an openness to Islam, a sense of shared values, support for Muslim aspirations and a determination to use American power to help fix the problems that most trouble them. It won praise as a superb oratorical performance.

 

“The cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” Mr Obama declared, to enthusiastic applause. “I have come to seek a new beginning, based on co-operation and respect.” Punctuated with quotations from the Koran, the speech ranged from pressing issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran’s nuclear ambitions to principles such as democracy and women’s rights. It culminated in a vision of a more tolerant and peaceful world.

 

The American president did not shy away from chiding some Muslims for their reluctance to condemn violent extremism or the tendency to measure their own faith by rejection of another. He made a strong pitch for America’s own vision of religious freedom, and called for understanding of the historical suffering of Jews. Castigating the denial of the Nazi Holocaust as “baseless, ignorant and hateful”, he took an indirect swipe at Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But he also evoked Palestinians’ suffering, describing their situation as “intolerable”. He forthrightly repeated his demand for an end to Jewish colonisation of Palestinian territory.

 

Mr Obama has addressed Muslims before. He granted his first interview as president to an Arab satellite channel, beamed a warm message to Iranians for their spring festival, and spoke at a conference on religious tolerance in Istanbul. But this speech fulfilled his pre-inauguration promise to make a bold bid to restore American prestige with a direct public address in a Muslim capital.

 

Will Mr Obama’s rousing oratory bear fruit? Many Muslims are still embittered by the legacy of the Bush years, which accumulated injuries ranging from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to scandalous treatment of Muslim prisoners and a perceived deepening of American bias towards a belligerent Israel. Opinion polls, which showed a drastic slide in American prestige, have nudged upwards under Mr Obama, with his own popularity far higher than that of the nation he represents.

 

Yet the constant refrain, heard on Cairo’s streets as well as from media pundits, is that Arabs and Muslims would like to see Mr Obama’s words matched by deeds. “To win our hearts, you must win our minds first, and our minds are set on the protection of our interests,” declared one of the reams of editorials, columns and open letters from across the region before Mr Obama spoke.

 

Broadly speaking, and despite the latest internet tirades of Osama bin Laden, most Muslims recognise the sincerity of Mr Obama’s effort to extricate America from Iraq—and its complexity. More grudgingly, they also understand his quandary in Afghanistan. The one issue where Muslim opinion converges with a demand for a change in America’s approach is Palestine. Here, arguably, no American action can be expected fully to assuage Muslim and Arab grievances fast, partly because of what Mr Obama described as America’s “unbreakable bond” with Israel and partly because half of the Palestinians’ divided polity is run by Hamas, an Islamist group still seen as anathema to America. But Muslims are immensely cheered by the fact that Israelis are plainly rattled by Mr Obama’s pressure over the issue of Jewish settlement on occupied land.

 

Mr Obama’s determination to set America’s relations with Muslims on a new footing will bring hope across the Middle East and farther afield. The difficulty now lies in translating the new goodwill into action, not just by America, but by its Arab and Muslim allies.