A U.S. president addressing the world is in a very different situation from that of a religious leader interpreting a doctrine or a philosopher clarifying a logical argument. He is concerned principally not with the truth of his propositions but with their likely effects. That does not mean he can tell outright lies — they would be detected and he discredited — but it does suggest that he will stress some truths more than others and soften the harsher ones. And he will be right to do so if the effect is to reconcile civilizations and religions at risk of conflict with each other.
Some of the critical comments on Pres. Barrack Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world neglect this obvious consideration. Conservatives will naturally be irritated by his apologetic tone over Guantanamo and his self-praise for “unequivocally” forswearing torture as U.S. policy. His defense of the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab against (we suppose) Western authorities, such as the French government, which restrict it was a cheap shot. Some governments of Muslim countries also restrict traditional dress, such as successive Kemalist governments in Turkey, and others such as Saudi Arabia insist on sartorial anonymity for women. It would have been gracious of the president to acknowledge the firmness of President Bush immediately after 9/11 in warning against ill-treatment of Muslims in America — a warning that, not incidentally, helped ensure that there were very few cases of ill-treatment. And an absolutely fair account of Muslim-Christian relations would have brought up Muslim slave-traders, the conquest of Christian lands in North Africa, Spain, and Eastern Europe, and the discrimination against Christians today in much of the Middle East.
Such unvarnished truths are sometimes politically necessary. It is a pity that Western leaders did not demand unqualified condemnations of 9/11 from Muslim leaders at the time. It would have served notice that America and the West would not tolerate divided loyalties from their Muslim citizens. But much has happened since 2001. A different set of grievances, from Abu Graib to NATO bombs that go astray and kill Afghan civilians, is now on the table. A myth of Christian, Western, and American hostility toward Islam has grown up. It materially assists (though not as materially as rich Saudi Wahhabists) the wrong side in the Islamic civil war between the overlapping, diverse, and largely tolerant camps of traditional Islam and the narrow, puritan, militant sects of Salafist Islam. And if there was one theme uniting the president’s laundry list of a speech, it was the necessity to assist the former by removing any grounds for anti-Americanism that might strengthen the latter. Telling historical truths and scoring historical points were not the purpose of his speech; reassuring Muslims of American goodwill was.
Obama was helped by his biography, of course; the fact that he had a Muslim father plainly made him more attractive to his listeners, who gave him a standing ovation. On this occasion he apologized less and boasted more about America. He linked his own story (“not unique”) to the promise of opportunity that America holds out for all, including the 7 million American Muslims who enjoy higher-than-average incomes and education. Finally, he warned Muslims not to accept crude stereotypes of America.
Having set out a general picture of the compatibility of America and Islam, Obama examined a number of cases in which many of his Muslim listeners accept crude anti-American stereotypes — notably, the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, nuclear proliferation (especially to Iran), democracy promotion, and religious freedom. In his stern condemnation of Israeli settlement building and his surprising endorsement of a role for Hamas in a two-state solution, he was taking considerable risks that recent Palestinian history hardly justifies. Since the risks are with Israeli lives and security, Prime Minister Netanyahu may not go along.
On Iran, Obama was shockingly weak. He could not muster the fortitude to call on the Iranians to give up their nuclear program, even as he stood in the capital of an Arab ally deeply fearful of the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
But on other issues, Obama was unexpectedly firm — for instance, his defense of democracy as a universal form of government was closer to the Bush policy than anything Secretary of State Clinton has said recently, yet it was qualified by considerations of cultural difference that many conservatives would endorse. Overall, Obama sought to find a modus vivendi in each case to which both sides of a dispute could reasonably assent. And there’s the rub.
Many Muslim commentators are now saying: This was a fine speech — what now? How will Obama fulfill the promises that all his listeners now fervently believe they heard? They have already forgotten the qualifications he laid down and the requests for compromise he sought from them. So it will be very hard for him to meet the expectations he has inevitably aroused on each of the specific issues he discussed.
An even larger problem looms for the president. His assertion that Islam and America are compatible is either an exaggeration or a prediction. At present Islam is simply not fully compatible with the liberty that defines America politically. Unless something changes, Islam and America will continue to coexist uneasily in a permanent tepid confrontation that will obstruct and undercut all the specific approaches Obama outlined in his speech. But something could change — or, rather, be changed by America’s (fewer than 7 million) Muslims.
America’s Catholics once were suspected of being incompatible with an American liberty rooted in Protestantism. That incompatibility vanished when America converted Catholics here to liberty. They in turn converted the Catholic Church worldwide to liberty as well at the Second Vatican Council. Though the possibility seems remote, it is not inconceivable that America’s Muslims could undergo the same evolution and eventually perform the same missionary service. For that possibility to become a fact, however, Obama would have to tell some of the hard truths of assimilation and equality to American Muslims that he diplomatically omitted when addressing the world’s Muslims on Thursday.