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Obama the UnderminerBy addressing the "Muslim world" from Cairo, the president is helping Tehran.

By Lee SmithPosted Wednesday, June 3, 2009, at 5:11 PM ET

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In January 2009, Michael Young warned that President Obama's engagement with Iran and Syria could backfire. In 2005, Tamara Wittes assessed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In 2003, Christopher Hitchens spoke with the Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson, then a junior cleric, who recommended that the United States invade Iran. Anne Applebaum ridiculed the idea of a "reset button" in foreign relations.

There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, stretching from India to Indonesia and from the United Arab Emirates to the United States, which makes Islam perhaps the world's most heterodox faith. Some pray like this, others like that; some are white, some black; some are Arabs, some are Chinese; a minority think Ali should have succeeded the prophet of Islam directly, the majority think it turned out right with Abu Bakr following Mohammed. In addition to Sunnis and Shiites, there are Sufis and Salafis, Wahabbis and Zaidis, as well as dozens of other minority sects. Islam, despite the simplicity of its profession of faith—there is no God but God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God—is an esoteric creed with more than a millennium of jurisprudence and philosophy behind it. Islam is complicated. But Khomeini reduced this all to one big idea: Being a Muslim means opposition to the West, especially the United States. This is Khomeini's Muslim world—not a caliphate or a wonderful mosaic of various practices and beliefs, but a unity forged on the anvil of resistance. This concept is what bridges, for instance, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization, and Hezbollah, Lebanon's Shiite militia.

This ideological bearing has had profound strategic consequences, for if Muslims must be in opposition to the Great Satan, they must also be in opposition to the West's allies, including not only the Little Satan, Israel, but also the Sunni Arab powers that are aligned with Washington. Tehran's public diplomacy campaign is designed to separate the Arab masses from their regimes, a tactic it employed, for instance, in the July 2006 war pitting Hezbollah against Israel. In the court of Muslim public opinion, tacit support for an Israeli war against Tehran's Lebanese client cost the Arab states dearly, that is every Arab state save Syria, an Iranian ally, which also supports Hezbollah.

The Iranian axis fared less well after Israel's attack on Hamas, another Iranian asset, in Gaza this past winter. When Hezbollah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah encouraged the Egyptian masses to topple President Hosni Mubarak for backing Israel against Hamas, Egyptian popular opinion turned against Hezbollah, for as much as the inhabitants of the Nile river valley may support resistance elsewhere, they don't like it at home. How dare this "cab driver," as some Egyptians called Nasrallah, interfere with internal Egyptian matters? Mubarak had struck gold—Egyptians were no longer behaving like fans of the resistance or as an amorphous grouping of "Muslims" supporting transnational Muslim causes; they were acting like loyal Egyptians, in line with the ruling regime. In effect, Obama's speech to the "Muslim world" serves to erase the national borders of our Arab allies, and however questionable those allies are, their borders serve American interests, and erasing them serves Iranian ends.

The president says he understands the Iranian threat and knows how dangerous its nascent nuclear program is to regional stability. He explains that he wants to restart the Palestinian-Israeli peace process because he thinks this will give him leverage against Iran. He hears Arab rulers saying that peace will strengthen the moderates and weaken the radicals, but this is not what they're really saying. The president stopped off in Riyadh before Cairo to ask the Saudis for a few minor concessions toward Israel, like opening an interests section in Tel Aviv, or, as the New York Times put it, issuing a "few symbolic tourist visas for Israelis, or agree[ing] to hold open meetings with Israeli counterparts." But the Saudis will never do any such thing, because they know that at a very dangerous time in the region, it would only show them up as American stooges and crypto-Zionists and thereby enhance Iran's regional status as the stalwart defender of resistance. Washington's Arab allies are telling Obama that Iran is the problem, but he can't hear them while he's doing Tehran's public diplomacy.

AP Video: Obama Speaks in Egypt

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Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. His book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations will be published in fall 2009.

COMMENTS

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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