A Speech and a New Page in History

Never before has the unified Islamic world waited with such anticipation and interest as it did for Obama’s speech from Cairo. And, what’s more, it was the first speech of its kind to be directed exclusively at the Muslims of the world, given from an ancient Arabic and Islamic capital, which is also the headquarters of the oldest center for religious learning in the history of the world: Al-Azhar. The speech was immediately surrounded by a sense of historical importance and the content of the speech proved to be no less than the expectations of it, especially in the introduction about Islam and the relationship between America and Muslims, whereby he closed the book on one era and began to write a new one.

Obama rose to the podium seeming both happy and exuberant, powerful and with a sense of conviction. He was encouraged by the applause given in response to one paragraph after another, providing facts and figures about the honorable history of Islam and its contribution to human civilization. He also presented his own personal history, which helped his credibility. And with this, he effectively launched into the real purpose of his speech.

It is the first speech of its kind to be given by an American president or even by a Western one. It is the founding of a new history and the closing of an awful chapter of animosity based on religion and nationalism. It pulls the rug out from underneath the feet of religious extremists and intolerance on both sides of the confrontation. It is a response to the interests of the followers or all religions, those who live and interact with each other everywhere in a spirit of tolerance, freedom, and non-discrimination. Obama even announced his commitment to fight against the negative stereotypes about Islam.

Obama arranged the points of his speech around the following points: First, extremism and violence, which under this heading here stopped at Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then nuclear weapons and Iran, then democracy, then religious freedom, women, and lastly, economic development and the opportunities for progress.

And at this point, while speaking about hot-button issues, his speech was the least effective because of his wariness in using certain concepts while expressing his positions. Obama justified the intervention in Afghanistan on one hand and on the other considered the war in Iraq to be “optional” in an implicit condemnation of it. But he avoided talking about the past and preferred to speak about the future and his pledge to completely withdraw from Iraq and to guarantee both its unity and its stability.

While speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was not balanced by speaking about the suffering and torment of the Jews on one hand and that of the Palestinians on the other. This weakened some of the things said in previous speeches. He may have chosen to speak strongly about the Holocaust and the slaughter of six million Jews and the commitment and historic and unbreakable friendship with Israel so that he could then talk about the suffering of the Palestinians and their right to an independent state, stressing the right of “Palestine to exist, just as the right of Israel to exist.” He stressed the illegitimacy of the continuance of the settlements, using the term “must” at every instance. And he did not forget to speak about Hamas in a number of expressions that recognized their representation of a part of the Palestinian people and in calling on them to renounce violence.

As expected, he did not present a plan to resolve the conflict, but left room for doubt about what must be done to advance peace, declaring his personal commitment to follow up on this effort. Many will doubt the speech, but the new spirit of change was that which helped carry a progressive black American to the head of government in America, expressing the common need for urgent change. This change is a process that will not be finished in a day, but which started with a speech in Cairo, marking its symbolic starting point.