Our Little Hussein?

Between celebration and premature condemnation: how the Muslim world adapts itself to Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency

“W” departs and “H” arrives. After George W. Bush comes Barack H. Obama. The initial H stands for Hussein, a fact that leaves no Muslim indifferent. Hussein means “little Hassan” and stems from the Arabic word “hasuna” that translates as good and beautiful. No less a personage than Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib, grandson of the prophet bore the same name. No wonder, then, that Obama’s election as 44th President of the United States has thrilled the Muslim world so greatly.

Obama’s victory speech was carried live on election night by every al-Jazeera satellite channel. Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan were ignored; Obama was the headline of the evening. Two days later, Muslim blogs and newspapers were bubbling with effusive praise as well as premature condemnation. Obama has inspired the tea shops from Cairo to Kabul.

Let’s start with Saladin, who posts on Islam Online in the discussion forum “Barack Hussein Obama – What Do You Expect?” He writes, “The earth trembles. It’s gigantic, cosmic, enormous! If Americans elect a black man President why don’t we elect Joe the Plumber as Caliph?” The world is in confusion and there are no longer any valid prejudices. “Allah alone knows best.”

He’s answered by the more cautious Hassan: “I’m not pro-Obama, but in his victory we’re seeing the efforts made by those Americans who want to replace evil with goodness. Before absolute truth triumphs on earth, they have to start in the place where absolute evil is to be found – in America.”

Who is Saladin and who is Hassan, one may ask. Of course they’re both anonymous bloggers, but one can learn more from their hastily typed messages than one can from the properly filed commentaries appearing in the Egyptian or Iranian government-controlled media.

In the Arab world, there’s by no means any special sympathy for blacks. In Egypt, for example, the dark-skinned Nubians and Sudanese aren’t considered good looking. They were previously slaves of the Arabs. Mornings, in front of their mirrors, many an Egyptian woman reaches for her jar of “B-White Cream” to carefully lighten her skin tone. Obama is not attractive to Arabs because he’s black; he’s attractive because of his Muslim name and the fact that he deviates from the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant norm.

And a certain hope springs from that. In Saudi Arabia, businessman Ali al-Harithi praises the American democracy that brought a man “with a Muslim father into the White House.” That shows that Americans aren’t racist. “They elected Obama to show their rejection of the current administration’s conservative policies.” And that, quite probably, is the overarching consensus among the Muslim people. It’s the sense of relief that the world has been liberated from the last eight years of George W. Bush, terror of the seven seas.

Aside from that, however, there’s a hint that today’s Muslim joy could easily change to skepticism or even rejection. The Lebanese Shi’ite leader Nabih Berri warns against too quickly forgetting the shock caused by George W. Bush. “By electing Obama, Americans are trying to cleanse themselves of their past. Their wonderful democracy helps them do this.” Still, one hears at least a bit of praise in the statement. The Iranian newspaper Jomhouri-Eslami directly attacks Obama saying he will only change a few ceremonial procedures while the structures of “capitalism, Zionism and racism” will remain. And the Egyptian satellite news commentator and scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi warns against Democrats who, according to al-Qaradawi, “are no less enemies of the Arabs than are the Republicans.” He adds, “The Democrats just kill you more slowly. They’re like the snake whose bite you don’t feel until the venom has permeated your body.”

Whether such assessments become fact depends upon America’s Middle East policies. Is the bombing of radical Muslims in Pakistan, a possibility advanced by Obama himself recently, any different from George Bush’s bombing in Iraq just because Barack Obama gave the order to bomb? Definitely not, in the view of blogger As’ad. And will American support of Israel during the next war in Lebanon be any more acceptable just because “H” allows it rather than “W”? These are delicate questions one can already read on Arab web pages.

In the final analysis, Obama will be judged neither by the color of his skin nor his middle initial, but by his deeds. It has been almost completely forgotten that in 2000, American Muslims overwhelmingly voted for a man they would now prefer to forget: W.