Jonathan Freedland: Obama's Triumph in Cairo
[Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist.]
IN AN ancient city, America's still-new President aimed to heal a rift that has endured for decades, if not centuries. Barack Obama stood before a crowd of 3000 in the great hall of Cairo University on Thursday to deliver a speech that demonstrated not only his trademark eloquence, but also the sheer ambition of his purpose — nothing less than bridging the divide between Islam and the West.
"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust," Obama began, mindful of the expectations that preceded this event. Still, as he has proved, a major address can have a major impact, and there will be few more masterful speeches than this one.
Obama did not announce a new policy program or Middle East peace plan. Instead, it will be the tone — even the vocabulary — he used that will have the greatest impact. For the thread that ran through every paragraph was a simple but radical idea: respect for the Arab and Muslim world.
It was there in Obama's use of the traditional Muslim greeting, met with cheering applause: "Assalamu alaykum" (peace be upon you). There, too, in his quotations from "the holy Koran" — pronouncing the word the way his Cairo audience would. "I know civilisation's debt to Islam," he declared, before listing a Muslim record of achievement that stretched from algebra to poetry.
All of this was a world away from former president George Bush, who was unable to address Muslims in a tone that was not bellicose or patronising. If Bush had said the same words, they would have sounded phoney. But Obama had the credibility of his own life story: the Muslims in his father's family, the childhood years in Indonesia. What had threatened to be a liability for Barack Hussein Obama in the 2008 election campaign was deployed yesterday as an asset.
But it went deeper than flattery about the great Islamic past. He showed understanding, if not always acceptance, of what one might call the Arab and Muslim narrative. So he spoke of past "colonialism", a word shocking to hear from a US president. He admitted the Cold War use of Muslim nations as "proxies", and confessed to US involvement in the toppling of Iran's elected prime minister in 1953. One analyst noted references to "dignity" and "justice" and against "humiliation", words that resonate in Muslim discourse. Obama's aim was to break through the suspicion and cynicism that have accreted over decades and show that America is under truly new management. So he did not defend the invasion of Iraq, but called it a "war of choice".
Nowhere was the effort to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim narrative more dramatic than in the long passage on Israel-Palestine. There had, reportedly, been a debate among Obama aides over whether he should use the charged word "occupation" to describe Israel's hold of the territories it gained in 1967. Obama used it — and spoke of "Palestine", not a "future Palestinian state".
More striking, he did not confine his recognition of Palestinian suffering to the situation since 1967.
"For more than 60 years, they have endured the pain of dislocation," he said, surely coming closer than any previous US president to acknowledging what Palestinians call the "nakba" — catastrophe — of 1948. And he repeated his demand for Israeli settlement activity to stop...
Read entire article at The Age
IN AN ancient city, America's still-new President aimed to heal a rift that has endured for decades, if not centuries. Barack Obama stood before a crowd of 3000 in the great hall of Cairo University on Thursday to deliver a speech that demonstrated not only his trademark eloquence, but also the sheer ambition of his purpose — nothing less than bridging the divide between Islam and the West.
"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust," Obama began, mindful of the expectations that preceded this event. Still, as he has proved, a major address can have a major impact, and there will be few more masterful speeches than this one.
Obama did not announce a new policy program or Middle East peace plan. Instead, it will be the tone — even the vocabulary — he used that will have the greatest impact. For the thread that ran through every paragraph was a simple but radical idea: respect for the Arab and Muslim world.
It was there in Obama's use of the traditional Muslim greeting, met with cheering applause: "Assalamu alaykum" (peace be upon you). There, too, in his quotations from "the holy Koran" — pronouncing the word the way his Cairo audience would. "I know civilisation's debt to Islam," he declared, before listing a Muslim record of achievement that stretched from algebra to poetry.
All of this was a world away from former president George Bush, who was unable to address Muslims in a tone that was not bellicose or patronising. If Bush had said the same words, they would have sounded phoney. But Obama had the credibility of his own life story: the Muslims in his father's family, the childhood years in Indonesia. What had threatened to be a liability for Barack Hussein Obama in the 2008 election campaign was deployed yesterday as an asset.
But it went deeper than flattery about the great Islamic past. He showed understanding, if not always acceptance, of what one might call the Arab and Muslim narrative. So he spoke of past "colonialism", a word shocking to hear from a US president. He admitted the Cold War use of Muslim nations as "proxies", and confessed to US involvement in the toppling of Iran's elected prime minister in 1953. One analyst noted references to "dignity" and "justice" and against "humiliation", words that resonate in Muslim discourse. Obama's aim was to break through the suspicion and cynicism that have accreted over decades and show that America is under truly new management. So he did not defend the invasion of Iraq, but called it a "war of choice".
Nowhere was the effort to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim narrative more dramatic than in the long passage on Israel-Palestine. There had, reportedly, been a debate among Obama aides over whether he should use the charged word "occupation" to describe Israel's hold of the territories it gained in 1967. Obama used it — and spoke of "Palestine", not a "future Palestinian state".
More striking, he did not confine his recognition of Palestinian suffering to the situation since 1967.
"For more than 60 years, they have endured the pain of dislocation," he said, surely coming closer than any previous US president to acknowledging what Palestinians call the "nakba" — catastrophe — of 1948. And he repeated his demand for Israeli settlement activity to stop...