President Obama delivered a momentous speech at Cairo University this past Thursday, in which he discussed the future of American relations with the Middle East. As a follow-up to the round up of thoughts and hopes for Obama’s address, we have gathered a number of noteworthy responses to and opinions about the actual text. Read more under the video clip of the speech, below:
At TPM Café, M.J. Rosenberg breaks down Obama’s speech into eight distinct messages, including: American inclusion of Islam, American opposition to all violent extremism, and US committment to Israel and to Palestine. At Beliefnet, Stephen Waldman includes the text of Obama’s speech with his own annotations.
The Brookings Institute and the New York Times blog, The Lede, both asked a range of people for brief responses to the speech. Brookings asked experts in the field to respond, including Indian Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and Malaysian Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The Lede, on the other hand, interviewed Arab students in their teens and early twenties from Jordan and around Egypt. Ingy Hassieb, a 19-year-old Egyptian, writes:
The president did touch upon the important issues in Arab-U.S relations; I think that the president’s most important words were on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He made it clear that tragedy is not contained in one place, but what happens in one country affects the entire world, and naturally the situation in Palestine/Israel contributes.
Obama’s attention to Israel and Palestine struck a chord with many listeners. Indeed, his reference to “Palestine” as a unified state, and his call to end and reverse Israeli expansion into Palestinian territory was not overlooked. Patrick Buchanan quotes Israeli government press director Daniel Seamen, who said, “I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews live in Jerusalem.”
Buchanan goes on to show the collision course Obama and Netanyahu are now on, and writes, “For Israel and the United States, the days of wine and roses are over.” Charles Krauthammer agrees, saying that this dictate to “stop natural growth” is akin to asking Jews to stop procreating, effectively strangling the Jewish hope of survival.
However, there are those who see Obama’s speech as a positive for Israel. Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz that Obama proved himself as a true friend of Israel, welcoming negotiations instead of hostile threats as a way to guarantee the safety and peace of Israelis. Similarly, Aluf Benn hails the speech as a “strategic revolution,” in which Obama urged non-violence and a two state solution.
While the speech was aimed at the Middle East, and Muslims in particular, it still has important reverberations for Americans. At Religion Dispatches, Anthea Butler draws a parallel between Malcolm X’s trip to Cairo in 1964 and Obama’s trip this past week. She writes that “this was not only a speech to diffuse the Middle East’s distrust of America, but to deconstruct the simplistic political and religious mistrust of American Christianity towards Islam,” and believes that as Malcolm X returned to the United States and preached religious tolerance, so too must Obama.
In Public Discourse Jennifer S. Bryson agrees that the message Obama preached in Cairo is one that needs to be repeated in the United States: “Faith is something held by an individual, not a political entity,” and Islam is not a monolith, no matter what the State Department believes. Jon Stewart also sees the need for tolerance in the United States, and ruthlessly mocked American xenophobia, especially coming from Fox News:
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Highlighted in Wednesday’s round up was Faisal Ghori, who pointed out that a speech is only words, and it is actions that will win the day. David Paul Kuhn echoes this at the Real Clear Politics blog, saying, “I doubt the speech will jolt the Muslim world….In the Middle East, the people have heard it all before.”
There are those, however, who disagree. Diana Butler Bass writes at Progressive Revival that the subtle religious undertones in Obama’s speech have “moved the discussion of religion away from beliefs toward practices—away from creeds toward deeds.” At AltMuslim Rafia Zakaria argues that the new beginning Obama calls for can only be started by his speech, which acts as “a symbolic extension of the hand of friendship, a rhetorical turn from difference to mutuality and a change in attitude from hubris to respect.”
At Slate, Fred Kaplan argues that the results of this speech will take a generation to be realized, but that the fruit of that labor will be worth the effort:
It may be that the tensions are too intractable to smooth over just now; it may be that the extremists and rejectionists hold too much sway in their respective lands to be overwhelmed by the force of sweet reason. It may take a generation for Obama’s vision to take hold.
[…]This breakthrough may take a while. But whenever it comes about, if it ever does, today’s speech may be looked upon as the spark that set it in motion.
Finally, for those scholars, experts and leaders inclined to share their opinion with President Obama, the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy is compiling responses of 100 words or less on violent extremism in all of its forms; the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world; rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons; democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic development and opportunity. To submit your thoughts, send an email to obama_speech@islam-democracy.org by 10pm on Sunday, June 7.
