By Anna Zalewski,
VOA, Washington
|
President Barack Obama |
Barack Obama has been making overtures towards Arabs
and Muslims in general even before he was sworn in as president. In March he
recorded a video message for the Persian Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, and his
first television interview as president was given not to a U.S. broadcaster, but
to the Arab-language network al-Arabiya.
For months political analysts speculated about which country President Obama
would choose to make his global address on U.S./Muslim relations. Finally, White
House officials announced that Egypt had been selected as the venue for the long
anticipated speech saying that the country in many ways represents the heart of
the Arab world.
Barbara Slavin, Managing
Assistant Editor for the Washington Times,
thinks that Egypt is an excellent choice because for centuries, that country has
been the center of Islamic intellectual thought.
"Egypt seems to me a very good
choice for the Obama administration for a number of reasons," she said. "It's a
country that has a long history of peacemaking, was the first to make peace with
Israel, it's really a center still for Sunni Islamic thought, Al-Azhar
University in Cairo is a 1,000-years old and this is the most important
theological institute in the Sunni Muslim world so it makes a lot of sense if he
wants to address particularly the Sunni Muslims, and I think the U.S. has had
the most problems obviously with the Sunni Muslim world. It's also a way to
boost U.S. ties with Egypt which is going through a kind of a difficult period.
President Mubarak has been in power since 1981, he perhaps will pass from the
scene within the next few years, maybe try to hand over the presidency to his
son."
But there are some potential
drawbacks to the venue. For the past 28 years Egypt has been ruled under
emergency laws which have curtailed or suspended certain freedoms. At least
8,000 political prisoners are still kept in Egyptian prisons. Human rights
advocates hope that during his visit President Obama will make clear that he
supports the Egyptian people and their aspirations for basic rights, human
dignity and freedoms. On the other hand, there are some legitimate U.S. and
global interests in Muslim-majority regions which demand his attention and
regional cooperation.
Matthias Rueb of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explains:
"Obama actually has to address two problems in the Middle East. First of all
there is the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort that is stalled for a long time,
and the other issue is Iran. So he has to rally support within the Arab world
from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, even to Morocco and Northern Africa against Iran
that is probably trying to acquire nuclear weapons."
Matthias Rueb continues by saying
that as in Turkey, President Obama's speech in Egypt will present another
opportunity to fix America's broken image in the Arab and Islamic world. As
President Obama indicated in his address to the Turkish Parliament in April -
America's strategic relationship with Islamic states cannot rely exclusively on
joint opposition to al-Qaeda. It must also rest on other shared interests and
mutual respect. As Barbara Slavin of the Washington Times says - this is perhaps
the most significant strategic change that Mr. Obama has introduced as part of
his solution to improve U.S.- Muslim relations.
"President Obama has established
already a different way of addressing the Muslim world than the Bush
administration did," said Barbara Slavin. "He uses language such as 'mutual
respect', he talks about his own background as someone who spent a part of his
childhood in a Muslim country, and I think he tries to cast this very much not
as 'a U.S. war on Islamic fundamentalism' or 'U.S. war on terror' but the United
States trying to deal with extremism, but reach out to those who are moderate
from all religious persuasions."
It is not so much what Barack
Obama says, but how he says it. Nadia Bilbassy is Senior News Correspondent for
the Middle East Broadcasting Center based in Washington DC:
"So I think it is how he is going
to address the Muslim world," said Nadia Bilbassy. "Now, we know that he is a
very effective communicator - so far he struck all the right notes, he said all
the right things from the beginning. He is going to emphasize the message that
America is not and never will be at war with Islam, he will dismiss the notion
that the West is in clash of civilizations with the Muslim world, so I think the
focus is on how he's going to open a new page."
Ultimately though, according to
Nadia Bilbassy, Muslims are hoping that President Obama's positive rhetoric will
translate into equally positive policies toward Muslim communities around the
world.
... Payvand News - 05/29/09 ... --
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