So Barack Obama's historic speech in Cairo is already getting rave reviews. It was, indeed, vintage Obama (if that's not an oxymoron), using his biography as a point of entrance and connection, eschewing what he views as old, false dichotomies, and stressing a pragmatic, hopeful way forward. One of Obama's strengths is the manner in which he dives into the thicket that many politicians talk around; his speeches often put complicated things in deceptively simple ways, as when he said that just as Islam is not the stereotype many Americans make it out to be, nor is "America ... the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire." He put his money where his mouth was. Where the Bush regime refused rhetorical nuance and deflected criticism by using words like "patriotism" and "democracy," by stark contrast, Obama spoke directly about America's complex history when he mentioned our role decades ago in the overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Iran. One question, though: Was he tough enough about women's rights? This was one area where I felt Obama didn't push hard enough, though his position is one I respect, and he frames it cogently. As he put it, "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous." I wish, though, he had said more on this subject; it has always seemed to me that his one point of weakness has been in reaching out to women in particular. Thoughts?

Tags: Barack Obama, cairo, egypt, Islam, speech

Without question, this was the first serious foreign policy speech Obama has made as president. In giving it, he broke a number of taboos and slid over several potential minefields, reaffirming America's commitment to Israel as well as to Palestinian statehood in front of an Egyptian audience, and going out of his way to make statements about democracy, womens' rights, and religious freedom. If the speech were the dawn of a new age of public diplomacy then I'm all in favor.

Two things worried me about it, however. For my taste, there was too much "on the one hand, on the other hand" about the language, including (I'm agreeing with Meghan here) on women. He didn't have to start that particular riff by declaring that "there is debate about this issue," as if the repression of some very fundamental rights of half the human race were somehow "debatable." And he could have spared us the comment about the "struggle for womens' equality' in America," as if we were all in this together, us and the regimes who stone women for adultery. He did a similar thing on religious freedom, noting that there are some legal difficulties for Muslim charities in America, as if that problem was somehow comparable to the absolute ban on Christian practice in Saudi Arabia. I could go on. In fact, if you look carefully at the different sections of the speech you'll see that he did this kind of thing on every issue.

I assume this equivocation was a deliberate rhetorical tactic, designed to soften the message. And under normal circumstances, I'd be bothered. But in this case, it hardly matters, since almost no one in Cairo, or anyone almost anywhere in the world, is going to remember the details of what Obama said anyway. The importance of this speech was in the imagery, in the impression of a new opening, in the hint of new kinds of partnership to come, in the fact that it was made in downtown Cairo, at a real Egyptian university and not at some diplomatic conference center. Which gets me to the other thing that bothers me: To date, the Obama administration has shown a striking lack of interest in what we used to call "democracy promotion" such as courses for judges and journalists,or radio debates about human rights—mundane programs which we used to be rather good at designing and lately seem not to be. Other than a few references to student exchanges and the like, I didn't hear anything that made it sound as if the Obama administration has thought a lot about how to follow up on this speech, and that worries me. "Dialogue" is all very well, as long as the president doesn't believe that "dialogue," by itself, will fix anything at all (and sometimes I worry that he does). As an opening shot, this was a good one. What's next?

Tags: cairo, muslim women, Obama, obama's speech in cairo, women's rights

Like you, Anne, I’ve been wondering what kind of big, concrete policy changes will come out of Obama’s Cairo speech yesterday. The specific programs he spoke of—far down near the end of the hour-long address—seemed soft-focus and shallow compared to the gigantic arc of intercultural understanding traced by his rhetoric. But I want to spend a moment here on Obama’s language, which, as always, rewards close reading. This was evidently the 2004 Democratic convention speech for the Muslim world—“there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America,” he said then, and yesterday: “the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.” But what struck me most powerfully was an echo in the section on Israelis and Palestinians of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, an unlikely allusion in the context of previous foreign policy speeches but a fitting one for Obama in speaking of the Holy Land that had such metaphorical value for King. In appealing to Palestinians to model their quest for statehood on the nonviolent struggle for desegregation in the South, Obama internationalized the tropes of America’s Civil Rights movement in a way that I think King would have deeply admired. In August 1963, King said:

I have a dream that ... one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers ... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

Compare this with Obama’s Cairo riff:

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and 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.

Seeing these two passages side by side, there’s clearly more to the echo than the hope of a future when two peoples divided by hatred, pain, and mistrust will watch their children walk together in peace. There’s also the reach for transcendence that comes, in King’s speech, with a reference to Biblical salvation and, in Obama’s, with an allusion to the 17th sura of the Koran, a story that’s as obscure to most Americans as it is familiar to Muslims. The story of Isra is a dreamlike account of a journey Mohammad takes at night from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven. In Jerusalem, he prays the other prophets (Moses and Jesus). In heaven, he sees them again, and on the way back from his meeting with Allah, he runs into Moses, who tells him to try to get Allah to reduce his people’s prayer commitment from 50 times a day to something more manageable (after much bargaining, Allah finally cuts it to five).

It’s funny to think of the archetypal Jew and the holy prophet of Islam collaborating to prevent Muslims from having to spend an inordinate amount of time praying, especially in the context of current Arab-Israeli relations. But the important thing about Obama’s reference here is the way it displays his penchant for mixing the political and the spiritual in a manner utterly different from that of his predecessor, who used the Biblical rhetoric of good and evil to polarize, not to unite. Obama is the kind of leader who calls unabashedly for God’s help with problems that are too big for men to solve and who speaks openly, as he did in that 2004 convention address, of “a belief in things not seen” as “God’s greatest gift to us.” If nothing else in Obama’s speech resonates with the Muslim world, this impulse to believe in the unseen most certainly will. In voicing it, Obama has brought us closer to a meaningful connection with Muslims than any other leader in my lifetime.

Tags: martin luther king jr, Muslims, Obama's Cairo speech, rhetoric

Like you, Anne, I’ve been wondering what kind of big, concrete policy changes will come out of Obama’s Cairo speech yesterday. The specific programs he spoke of—far down near the end of the hour-long address—seemed soft-focus and shallow compared to the gigantic arc of intercultural understanding traced by his rhetoric. But I want to spend a moment here on Obama’s language, which, as always, rewards close reading. This was evidently the 2004 Democratic convention speech for the Muslim world—“there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America,” he said then, and yesterday: “the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.” But what struck me most powerfully was an echo in the section on Israelis and Palestinians of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, an unlikely allusion in the context of previous foreign policy speeches but a fitting one for Obama in speaking of the Holy Land that had such metaphorical value for King. In appealing to Palestinians to model their quest for statehood on the nonviolent struggle for desegregation in the South, Obama internationalized the tropes of America’s Civil Rights movement in a way that I think King would have deeply admired. In August 1963, King said:

I have a dream that ... one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers ... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

Compare this with Obama’s Cairo riff:

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and 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.

Seeing these two passages side by side, there’s clearly more to the echo than the hope of a future when two peoples divided by hatred, pain, and mistrust will watch their children walk together in peace. There’s also the reach for transcendence that comes, in King’s speech, with a reference to Biblical salvation and, in Obama’s, with an allusion to the 17th sura of the Koran, a story that’s as obscure to most Americans as it is familiar to Muslims. The story of Isra is a dreamlike account of a journey Mohammad takes at night from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven. In Jerusalem, he prays the other prophets (Moses and Jesus). In heaven, he sees them again, and on the way back from his meeting with Allah, he runs into Moses, who tells him to try to get Allah to reduce his people’s prayer commitment from 50 times a day to something more manageable (after much bargaining, Allah finally cuts it to five).

It’s funny to think of the archetypal Jew and the holy prophet of Islam collaborating to prevent Muslims from having to spend an inordinate amount of time praying, especially in the context of current Arab-Israeli relations. But the important thing about Obama’s reference here is the way it displays his penchant for mixing the political and the spiritual in a manner utterly different from that of his predecessor, who used the Biblical rhetoric of good and evil to polarize, not to unite. Obama is the kind of leader who calls unabashedly for God’s help with problems that are too big for men to solve and who speaks openly, as he did in that 2004 convention address, of “a belief in things not seen” as “God’s greatest gift to us.” If nothing else in Obama’s speech resonates with the Muslim world, this impulse to believe in the unseen most certainly will. In voicing it, Obama has brought us closer to a meaningful connection with Muslims than any other leader in my lifetime.

Tags: martin luther king jr, Muslims, Obama's Cairo speech, rhetoric