BY
And got it stomped on.
Israel’s former ambassador to the United States on the president’s naiveté as
peacemaker, blinders to terrorism, and alienation of allies.
Days after jihadi gunmen slaughtered 11 staffers of the Charlie Hebdomagazine and a
policeman on January 7, hundreds of thousands of French people marched in
solidarity against Islamic radicalism. Forty-four world leaders joined them,
but not President Barack Obama. Neither did his attorney general at the time,
Eric Holder, or Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, both of
whom were in Paris that day. Other terrorists went on to murder four French
Jews in a kosher market that they deliberately targeted. Yet Obama described the killers
as “vicious zealots who … randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”
Pressed about the absence of a high-ranking American official at
the Paris march, the White House responded by convening a long-delayed
convention on “countering violent extremism.” And when reminded that one of the
gunmen boasted that he intended to kill Jews, presidential Press Secretary Josh
Earnest explained that the
victims died “not because of who they were, but because of where they randomly
happened to be.”
Obama’s boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to
acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location
of the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam and
the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate in a protest
against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than
a radical interpretation, of Islam. And if there are no terrorists spurred by
Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish
victims, only a deli and randomly present folks.
Understanding Obama’s worldview was crucial to my job as Israel’s
ambassador to the United States. Right after entering office in June 2009, I
devoted months to studying the new president, poring over his speeches,
interviews, press releases, and memoirs, and meeting with many of his friends
and supporters. The purpose of this self-taught course — Obama 101, I called it
— was to get to the point where the president could no longer surprise me. And
over the next four years I rarely was, especially on Muslim and Middle Eastern
issues.
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual
interest and mutual respect,” Obama declared in his first inaugural address. The underlying assumption was that
America’s previous relations with Muslims were characterized by dissention and
contempt. More significant, though, was the president’s use of the term “Muslim
world,” a rough translation of the Arabic ummah. A
concept developed by classical Islam, ummah refers to a community of believers
that transcends borders, cultures, and nationalities. Obama not only believed
that such a community existed but that he could address and accommodate it.
The novelty of this approach was surpassed only by Obama’s claim
that he, personally, represented the bridge between this Muslim world and the
West. Throughout the presidential campaign, he repeatedly referred to his
Muslim family members, his earlier ties to Indonesia and the Muslim villages of
Kenya, and his Arabic first and middle names. Surveys taken shortly after his
election indicated that nearly a quarter of Americans thought their presidentwas a
Muslim.
This did not deter him from actively pursuing his bridging role.
Reconciling with the Muslim world was the theme of the president’s first television interview — with Dubai’s Al Arabiya —
and his first speech abroad. “The United States is not, and will never be, at
war with Islam,” he told the Turkish
Parliament in April 2009. “America’s relationship with the Muslim community …
cannot, and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism.… We seek
broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will convey
our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith.” But the fullest exposition of
Obama’s attitude toward Islam, and his personal role in assuaging its
adherents, came three months later in Cairo.
Billed by the White House as “President Obama Speaks to the Muslim
World,” the speech was delivered
to a hall of carefully selected Egyptian students. But the message was not
aimed at them or even at the people of Egypt, but rather at all Muslims.
“America and Islam are not exclusive,” the president determined. “[They] share
… common principles — principles of justice and progress, tolerance, and the
dignity of all human beings.”
With
multiple quotes from the Quran — each enthusiastically applauded — the
president praised Islam’s accomplishments and listed colonialism, the Cold War,
and modernity among the reasons for friction between Muslims and the West. “Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small
but potent minority of Muslims,” he explained, in the only reference to the
religious motivation of most terrorists. And he again cited his personal ties
with Islam which, he said, “I have known Islam on three continents before
coming to the region where it was first revealed.”
These pronouncements presaged what was, in fact, a profound
recasting of U.S. policy. While reiterating America’s support for Israel’s
security, Obama stridently criticized its settlement policy in the West Bank
and endorsed the Palestinian claim to statehood. He also recognized Iran’s
right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, upheld the principle of
nonproliferation, and rejected former President George W. Bush’s policy of
promoting American-style democracy in the Middle East. “No single nation should
pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons,” he said. “No system of
government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” In essence,
Obama offered a new deal in which the United States would respect popularly
chosen Muslim leaders who were authentically rooted in their traditions
and willing to engage with the West.
The Cairo speech was revolutionary. In the past, Western leaders
had addressed the followers of Islam — Napoleon in invading Egypt in 1798 and
Kaiser Wilhelm II while visiting Damascus a century later — but never before
had an American president. Indeed, no president had ever spoken to adherents of
a world faith, whether Catholics or Buddhists, and in a city they traditionally
venerated. More significantly, the Cairo speech, twice as long as his inaugural
address, served as the foundational document of Obama’s policy toward Muslims.
Whenever Israeli leaders were perplexed by the administration’s
decision to restore diplomatic ties with Syria — severed by Bush after the
assassination of Lebanese president Rafik Hariri — or its early outreach to
Libya and Iran, I would always refer them to that text. When policymakers back
home failed to understand why Obama stood by Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who imprisoned journalists and backed Islamic radicals, or Mohamed
Morsi, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and briefly its
president, I would invariably say: “Go back to the speech.” Erdogan and Morsi
were both devout Muslims, democratically elected, and accepting of Obama’s
outstretched hand. So, too, was Hassan Rouhani, who became Obama’s partner in
seeking a negotiated settlement of the Iranian nuclear dispute.
How did the president arrive at his unique approach to Islam? The
question became central to my research for Obama 101. One answer lies in the
universities in which he studied and taught — Columbia, Harvard, and the
University of Chicago — and where such ideas were long popular. Many of them
could be traced to Orientalism, Edward Said’s scathing critique of Middle East studies, and subsequent articles in
which he insisted that all scholars of the region be “genuinely engaged and
sympathetic … to the Islamic world.” Published in 1978, Orientalism became
the single most influential book in American humanities. As a visiting lecturer
in the United States starting in the 1980s, I saw how Said’s work influenced
not only Middle East studies but became a mainstay of syllabi for courses
ranging from French colonial literature to Italian-African history. The notion
that Islam was a uniform, universal entity with which the West must peacefully
engage became widespread on American campuses and eventually penetrated the
policymaking community. One of the primary texts in my Obama 101 course was the
2008 monograph, “Strategic Leadership:
Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy,” written
by foreign-relations experts, many of whom would soon hold senior positions in
the new administration. While striving to place its relations with the Middle
East on a new basis, the authors advised, America must seek “improved relations
with more moderate elements of political Islam” and adapt “a narrative of pride
in the achievements of Islam.”
In addition to its academic and international affairs origins,
Obama’s attitudes toward Islam clearly stem from his personal interactions with
Muslims. These were described in depth in his candid memoir, Dreams
from My Father, published 13 years before his election as president. Obama wrote
passionately of the Kenyan villages where, after many years of dislocation, he
felt most at home and of his childhood experiences in Indonesia. I could
imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural
bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s
abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance
by their co-religionists.
Yet, tragically perhaps, Obama — and his outreach to the Muslim
world — would not be accepted. With the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the vision
of a United States at peace with the Muslim Middle East was supplanted by a
patchwork of policies — military intervention in Libya, aerial bombing in Iraq,
indifference to Syria, and entanglement with Egypt. Drone strikes, many of them
personally approved by the president, killed hundreds of terrorists, but also
untold numbers of civilians. Indeed, the killing of a Muslim — Osama bin Laden
— rather than reconciling with one, remains one of Obama’s most memorable
achievements.
Diplomatically, too, Obama’s outreach to Muslims was largely
rebuffed. During his term in office, support for America among the peoples of
the Middle East — and especially among Turks and Palestinians — reached an all-time nadir. Back in
2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together
with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference.
In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a
Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring
Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of
their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and
his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran.
Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining
Obama’s initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims. “[I]f we were able to get
Iran to operate in a responsible fashion,” he told the New
Yorker, “you could see an equilibrium developing between [it and]
Sunni … Gulf states.” The assumption that a nuclear deal with Iran will render it “a very
successful regional power” capable of healing, rather than inflaming, historic
schisms remained central to Obama’s thinking. That assumption was scarcely
shared by Sunni Muslims, many of whom watched with deep concern at what they
perceived as an emerging U.S.-Iranian alliance.
Six years after offering to “extend a hand if you are willing to
unclench your fist,” President Obama has seen that hand repeatedly shunned by
Muslims. His speeches no longer recall his Muslim family members, and only his
detractors now mention his middle name. And yet, to a remarkable extent, his policies
remain unchanged. He still argues forcibly for the right of Muslim women to
wear — rather than refuse to wear — the veil and insists on calling “violent
extremists” those who kill in Islam’s name. “All of us have a
responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent
Islam,” he declared in February,
using an acronym for the Islamic State. The term “Muslim world” is still part
of his vocabulary.
Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam
with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness. While some may credit the
president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and
detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality. For the Middle East
continues to fracture and pose multiple threats to America and its allies. Even
if he succeeds in concluding a nuclear deal with Iran, the expansion of the
Islamic State and other jihadi movements will underscore the failure of Obama’s
outreach to Muslims. The need to engage them — militarily, culturally,
philanthropically, and even theologically — will meanwhile mount. The
president’s successor, whether Democrat or Republican, will have to grapple
with that reality from the moment she or he enters the White House. The first
decision should be to recognize that those who kill in Islam’s name are not
mere violent extremists but fanatics driven by a specific religion’s zeal. And
their victims are anything but random.
***
This was my reaction to Obama's Cairo speech:
***
This was my reaction to Obama's Cairo speech:
June 4,
2009
Obama quotes verse 5:32, omits 5:33
President Obama in his speech said " The Holy Koran teaches that
whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever
saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind."
I really find it odd
that neither President Obama nor any of his advisors did not realize that the
meaning of verse 5:32 is not clear until it is quoted together
with verse 5:33 which follows it:
005.032
YUSUFALI: On that account: We ordained for the
Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or
for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people:
and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole
people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet,
even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land
005.033
YUSUFALI: The punishment of those who wage war
against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief
through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and
feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in
this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;
Update: Andrew Bostom
writes:
Immediately following the murderous acts of jihad terrorism committed on September 11, 2001, Ibn Warraq highlighted the tragic irony of many apologists quoting selectively from Qur'an 5:32-"whoso slays a soul . . . shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether"- attempting to demonstrate that the Qur'ran disapproved of violence and killing.
Firstly, these
wonderful sounding words come from a preexisting Jewish text (Mishnah,
IV Division 5, "Thus was created a single man, to teach us that
every person who loses a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he
has lost the entire world, and every person who sustains a single soul, it
shall be written about him as if he has sustained the entire world."
And apologists for
Islam-just like President Obama-quote the Koranic words out of context. For the
very next verse offers quite a different meaning from that of 5:32, which was
"laid...down for the Israelites," as stated in the next verse, 5:33,
continuing:
"...Our apostles
brought them [the Jews] veritable proofs: yet it was not long before many of
them committed great evils in the land. Those that make war against Allah and
His apostle [Muhammad] and spread disorder shall be put to death or crucified
or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from
the country. (Qur'an 5:33)"
The supposedly noble sentiments of the first
verse, taken from a Jewish source, are entirely undercut by the second verse,
which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews. (And as an aside
the Muslim sources estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns
against them). Far from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist
that any who oppose the Muslim prophet will be killed, or crucified, mutilated,
and banished.
