Muslim expectations

The thing Obama most needs to embrace in his upcoming address to Muslims is a commitment that from now on the US will act even-handedly, writes Ayman El-Amir*

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Government officials and political pundits preparing for a hair-splitting analysis of the message US President Barack Obama will deliver to the estimated 1.5 billion Muslims around the world when he speaks in Cairo, Egypt, on 4 June may find more reconciliatory rhetoric coming than bones to pick. For one thing, it will be nothing close to the 1963 John F Kennedy Ich bin ein Berliner speech, nor is Obama planning to outline policies that are still in the making. For another, the Muslim world is a myriad of cultures and polities that can only be addressed in general terms, with due regard to basic tenets. However, Muslims in general, and Middle East Arabs in particular, have high expectations of a change of perception as much as a change of policy under the Obama administration.

The Bush-era free wheeling denigration of Muslims since 11 September has created more radicalism than there ever was; meanwhile, the confrontation with Muslim radicalism in the name of the war on terror has spawned more terrorism. The destabilising effects of global terrorism on the international situation and regional security should be a matter of grave concern to the Obama administration. So Barack Obama should not only deliver the right message but also get the right lesson. The US government and its associated institutions need to work towards debunking the myth that to be Muslim is synonymous with embracing terrorism and that, as a historical inevitability, Islam is on a collision course with Western civilisation, as some Western scholars have sought to impose. More likely, the Muslim world has borne the brunt of Western colonialism as much as the scourge of slavery has tainted Western civilisation. There is ample space for redesigning the relationship if perceptions and policies undergo fundamental transformation.

The 11 September attacks only confirmed Western perceptions of Arabs and Muslims that were further exacerbated by terrorist explosions in Bali, Madrid, Moscow, London and other high-profile locations around the world. Most Muslims have repudiated such attacks even when the US retaliated by bombing Afghanistan to obliteration and invaded Iraq. The result is that terrorism has developed into a global phenomenon, not exclusively Muslim. It reflects all kinds of political, economic and ethnic grievances that defy peaceful settlement. Crushing blows to terrorist organisations that have expediently been used to malign Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation and ethnic rebellions in Asia have not eradicated the lethal phenomenon. The US invasion and destruction of Iraq has touched the raw nerve of jihad and helped give the scourge further momentum.

US support of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the systematic decimation of their population has gone a long way towards cultivating the culture of jihad against Israel and hostility towards its benefactor, the United States. The pro-Israel lobby has managed, with the support of the Bush administration, to portray Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation as acts of terrorism aimed at the extermination of the state of Israel -- a very popular catchword with the US public and the US Congress. Yet after the latest Israeli invasion of Gaza, and the mayhem it wreaked upon the Palestinians, questions began to arise which the Israeli lobby and the new administration could not persuasively answer. The ascendancy to power of the new right-wing extremist government in Israel added insult to injury and made a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict far- fetched. During his recent visit to Washington earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wanted to test the new administration's resolve and the power of the pro-Israeli lobby at arm-twisting. Suspecting that the new administration may not offer the usual condoning reaction of the Bush administration, the new prime minister resorted to pushing the question of Iran to the top of the agenda. But the ploy did not seem to work to the satisfaction of the Israeli leader.

It may serve President Obama well to remember that terrorism is rooted more in the economic, social and political marginalisation of hundreds of millions of people under the control of self-perpetuating autocracies than in religious fervour. People do not resort to violence to destroy national wealth and undermine stability, but rather because they are forced out of the social contract in favour of a chosen oligarchy. Although some earlier reports had indicated that, as part of its new outlook, the Obama administration may not be interested in highlighting the universal standards of human rights, democracy and representative government in Middle East countries where they are mostly lacking, President Obama needs to enunciate his administration's stand with regards to the respect of such universal values. After all, these values are enshrined in the fundamental tenets of Islam, even if they have been tainted by self-serving Arab rulers.

President Obama's administration is rightly wary of fundamentalist tendencies in the Muslim world, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and Iraq. Fundamentalism is contagious in a regional environment that does not foresee a peaceful and orderly transition to representative democracy and the fulfilment of national aspirations. The administration should look no further than Israeli-guided US policies towards the region to understand the dynamics of resistance and fundamentalism. At the forefront of the Middle East crisis is the Palestinian cause and Israeli racist attitudes towards it. Arabs and Muslims who have long been used to tireless utterances from Washington about the commitment to Israel's security and survival often wonder "And what about the Palestinian people?" Washington's excessive concern about the human rights situation in countries like China and Cuba demonstrates a cynical attitude as it tolerates Israeli gross human rights violation of the Palestinians under occupation. When the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has recently met in Damascus, expressed the firm commitment of 57 Muslim countries to the return of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian and Arab territories to the Arab people, Washington turned a deaf ear. When North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and Iran pursues a nuclear energy programme, a hue and cry arises in Washington where all branches of government are tight-lipped about Israeli possession of nuclear weapons and the threat this represents to the region.

Racist Israeli policy direction that seeks to commit the 1.5 million-strong indigenous Arab population of Israel to an oath of allegiance to Israel "as a Zionist Jewish state" or face expulsion goes conveniently unnoticed in Washington. The systematic change of the demographic and political structure of East Jerusalem and the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, against binding resolutions of the UN Security Council, is hardly a cause for concern either, while the White House, nonetheless, energetically rushed to the same council to raise the North Korean nuclear test issue. The Muslims whom Barack Obama intends to address on 4 June cannot help but see that Washington is speaking from both sides of its mouth when it comes to Arab and Muslim concerns. And they wonder about the veracity of the moral value system underlying such policies.

Despite all indications to the contrary, Iran's pursuit of a nuclear power programme is more of an Israeli scarecrow than an Arab concern. If President Obama's slogans of "Change we can" and "Change we must" are more than campaign catchphrases then he must diligently embrace a policy of a ban on all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, including rigorous international inspection on suspected facilities, whether the country involved is a signatory of the discredited Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or not. Only then can he make dramatic and genuine change in the troubled region.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.