June 11, 2009
Was Cairo the Wrong Place for Obama to Address the 'Muslim World'?
B. Raman in Outlook India:
The Arabs constitute a minority in the Islamic world. Non-Arab Muslims living in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia constitute the majority. The issues, which agitate them, are different from the issues which agitate the Arab world. Osama bin Laden understands this better than Obama and his advisers. That was why in his audio message released through Al Jazeera a day before Obama’s Cairo address, bin Laden focused on issues of immediate concern to the non-Arab Muslims in the Af-Pak region such as the large-scale displacement of Pashtuns from the tribal areas of Pakistan. By focusing on their plight and by holding the Americans responsible for it, he sought to make it certain that the anti-American anger in the Af-Pak region will increase rather than decrease.
Outside India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, the attitude of the Muslims towards the US is characterized by feelings of hostility or anger or scepticism. There is hardly any feeling of empathy or warmth. There are various reasons for the negative feelings towards the US. Some are country-specific, some are region specific and some are ethnicity specific. The negative feelings of the Arabs towards the US may be due to the Palestine issue and the perceived US support for Israel, but Palestine and Israel are not such burning issues in the non-Arab Islamic world.
Obama’s address seemed to have been constructed around the belief that the Muslims constitute a monolithic community and that their actions are motivated by certain issues of common concern to all the Muslims of the world. This is a wrong belief. The Muslims are not a monolithic community and there is no common thread uniting the anger motivating the Muslims in different countries and different regions. There are Muslims and Muslims and issues and issues.
If Obama wanted to address the Muslims of the world, Cairo was the wrong place from which to seek to do so.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 09:21 AM | Permalink
Comments
This is a confused, cliched, and basically silly article.
The negative feelings of the Arabs towards the US may be due to the Palestine issue and the perceived US support for Israel, but Palestine and Israel are not such burning issues in the non-Arab Islamic world.
This is simply untrue. I know from experience, and the suffering of Palestinians is a universal way of riling up extremists, especially so in the case of Al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Then he treats Obama (and us, his readers) like morons by lecturing us that,
Obama’s address seemed to have been constructed around the belief that the Muslims constitute a monolithic community and that their actions are motivated by certain issues of common concern to all the Muslims of the world. This is a wrong belief. The Muslims are not a monolithic community...
Thanks. Has he read anything in the last thirty years, to so straightfacedly suppose he is saying something new and brilliant?
The impact on the ordinary Muslims outside pockets of urban elite will not be significant. Ordinary Muslims are not so naïve as to be impressed by a couple of quotations from the Holy Koran. Muslims outside India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia are not enamoured of democracy. They have nothing against authoritarian rulers, provided they care for the ordinary Muslims. Mubarak is not an example of a caring ruler. Among Muslim rulers blessed and supported by the US, there is hardly anyone whom one can call caring for the common Muslims. The ordinary Muslims will judge the US by the company it keeps in the Islamic world than by the speeches of Obama.
What utter rubbish. Where, pray tell Mr. Raman, should Obama have addressed the Muslim world from? He won't say. He'll only say Cairo wasn't the right place.
Obama’s speech may help him back home by pushing up his popularity. Americans love such orations.
I guess Mr. Raman didn't bother to look at the hundreds of enthusiastically welcoming, warm, and thrilled editorials, and fawning reactions from students and ordinary Muslims across the entire Islamic world. The notion that Obama, an immensely popular president to begin with, would become even more popular in the U.S. by addressing the Muslim world from Cairo is beyond ludicrous, and shows how little Mr. Raman understands what he is going on at full speed about, in the typically self-assured (but ignorant) tone of his British-colonial foreign service predecessors. Really, all he is interested in doing here is getting in a couple of cheapshots at Pakistan. You're retired, Mr. Raman, you don't have to reel off talking points from the Indian Foreign Ministry!
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jun 11, 2009 11:33:44 AM
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