Obama the UnderminerBy addressing the "Muslim world" from Cairo, the president is helping Tehran.
Posted Wednesday, June 3, 2009, at 5:11 PM ETIf President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo on Thursday is designed to hit "reset" on Washington's relations with the Muslim world, the White House may soon find that it is pushing the wrong buttons. Public diplomacy in the lands of Islam is a deeply complicated affair, and Muslims do it much better than U.S. presidents.
It is a given that anything Obama says or does will be an improvement over the Bush administration's inept efforts at Muslim outreach. And yet it is worth recalling that the Bush administration also sought to appeal directly to Muslims. Bush's freedom agenda, after all, was intended to give Muslims a democratic voice in their own governance. Nonetheless, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's one-time point man for Middle East democracy, is one among many across the political spectrum who are concerned that by choosing an authoritarian police state for his podium, Obama may be signaling that the United States is ditching democracy promotion. But the real problem is that Obama has not learned from Bush's errors. In seeking to speak to the Muslim masses over the heads of their rulers, Obama, as columnist David Goldman (who usually writes under the name Spengler) explains, is undermining an important U.S. ally on his home turf.
"By addressing the 'Islamic world' from Cairo," writes Goldman, "Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms." In other words, the American president is playing into the hands of those who seek to bring down the U.S.-backed order in the Middle East.
Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, there has been no "Muslim world," as such. The caliphate was dissolved; Kemal Ataturk refashioned Turkey as a secular republic; and the European powers, particularly Great Britain and France, carved up the Ottomans' former territories into nation-states like Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Palestine, and Iraq. While Middle Easterners have complained for more than 80 years that these borders were imposed on them by the Europeans, the fact is that the region's rulers—if not always their subjects—are happy with their holdings.
These regimes fulfill almost none of the functions of a genuine nation-state—such as providing for the welfare of their citizens—but their centralized authority has generally satisfied European and U.S. officials. The stock and trade of our bilateral relations—diplomacy, commerce, and war—are less efficient instruments when transacted with tribal confederations, which, as we now know, thanks to our adventure in Iraq, is the basis of Middle East politics. There is no "Muslim world," only the chaos of competing clan systems, which is why preserving the quasi-nation-state system of the Middle East is a vital U.S. interest.
Now that Washington has put democracy promotion on the back burner, the only challenge to these regimes is from Islamists and other so-called nonstate actors, as well as the state that stands behind them: the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Obama has unwittingly walked right into the middle of Tehran's own public diplomacy campaign, one of the most effective PR efforts ever staged.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini introduced many important ideas into contemporary Islamic practice and thought—especially the highly contested notion of vilayet e-faqih, that the religious guide should also hold supreme political power—but perhaps Khomeini's major contribution was not an innovation but a simplification. To the question What does it mean to be a Muslim? Khomeini gave a one-word answer: resistance.
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It is ironic that the article thinks that Egypt is not the place to go if you want to broadcast to the Muslim world (but doesn't go onto say where else would be a better location) when at the same time the BBC just announces that the Al-Azhar university in Egypt is going to start offering guidance to the world on how to be a good Muslim. (i.e one that doesn't automatically attack the nearest non-Muslim whilst shouting "death to the infidel".)
Unlike Catholics, where effectively it is only the pope who can say what is and what isn't, with Muslims there is no central body of religious law and any Muslim religious leader can (and frequently does) make it up as he goes along.
However, if Muslims did have a central body for overseeing religious laws, statement and comments on the Muslim world in general then it is generally agreed that it would be the Al-Azhar University in Egypt.
They have been offering advice, via the telephone and internet to Egyptian Muslims for a while but they are now going worldwide. (Apparently most of the questions are not about how to bring down western civilization but are from teenagers troubled about their sexuality, zits, problems with the opposite sex, does my bum look big in this burka kind of thing)
The aim is to provide a voice of authority and reason when it comes to interpretations of the Koran so that gullible Muslim youths do not automatically believe any old fanatical rubbish spouted down at the local mosque by some bloke with a beard, hooks for hands and a hatred for the west.
I've never read the Koran, and don't particularly feel the urge to, but I strongly suspect that like the bible, you can cherry pick passages that allow you to justify any action no matter how weird, stupid or objectionable. And that equally there are other passages that condemn the same actions.
Any voices of reason, be they Obama's or some Egyptian cleric, speaking to the Muslim world should therefore be welcomed.
-- steelbucket
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Tehran did not accelerate its nuclear efforts until they saw how we whacked Iraq but spared Kim Jong of North Korea. We included them in the axis of evil, after they had helped us intercept jihadists fleeing Afghanistan. It looked we were spoiling for a fight, itching to "kick posterior". In their mind, the difference was simple: Pyongyang had nuclear power, Saddam did not. We picked on the weak. Then they figured, may be if they armed up, we'll let them be. Despicable as the regime is, remember this. Iran has never attacked anyone in its history.
Yes we need to let Tehran know it cannot and will not acquire the "bomb". In exchange, Tehran needs to know it is not going to be attacked again by any of our proxies in the region as Saddam did in the 80s.
-- vichton
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