By
Dwight Swanson
President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world is already fading into the past as the focus of world attention has turned to the post-election turmoil in Iran. However, the events going on now in Iran cannot be separated from that speech. Ayatolah Khamenei’s sermon in this Friday’s prayers in the University of Tehran mosque, which attempted to place blame for unrest on outside influences, needs to be seen as a direct response of fear to what the President of the United States presented to the world of Islam in his Cairo speech.
It is common for governments in turmoil to look for external distractions to direct attention away from internal failings (e.g., a ‘War on Terror’). In Iran’s case, a conservative leadership seems unwilling to accept the idea that a new generation would actually vote against their sacred beliefs—even though the vote was not against Islamic beliefs. Democracy is good when the conservatives win; a problem when they lose. Therefore, the problem must not be with good Muslims, but with people who hate what everything they stand for. Foreigners.
This is one plausible way of looking at events. Another is to see this, as suggested above, as the reaction of fear. Fear of change, as the edifice of fear of America is threatened by an American leader who offers a different way of relating.
This is a mirror image of the fear of Islam in the West, and the rhetoric of fear which dribbles like diarrhoea from rightwing politicians and commentators in the US. The response to Obama’s speech is little different from that of the Iranian imam, if diametrically opposite. For these purveyors of the need for enemies to hate, the prospect of a leader who is willing to reach out to opponents is a great threat. Fear is to be preferred.
President Obama%u2019s speech in Cairo has been faulted for many things. The greatest criticism has been that he did not go far enough in calling Muslim dictators to account. And they must be brought to account. But, one can expect only so much from one speech, especially the first of its kind in history. Attention needs to be given to what was actually said rather than to what was not yet stated.
And there is one statement that has been un-remarked on by commentators of all political stripes. That is Obama’s confession of faith. Is this reader the only one to note this? He said ‘I am a Christian’. The man who Fundamentalist Christians still insist is an evil Muslim in disguise stood before an audience of Muslims, in a speech broadcast to every Muslim land, and said, ‘I am a Christian’.
This is remarkable! No president in my lifetime—from Eisenhower to George W Bush—stood in a public setting and confessed to their Christian faith. All have used generic religious language, of ‘the Almighty’, for instance. But none have openly confessed to be Christians. And Obama has done so before an audience of non-Christians. Of the feared Muslim population. What courage!
Some might protest that this is a general statement of belonging to a Christian nation. But this cannot be sustained. Do not forget Obama’s statement in Ankara, to criticism, that the United States is not a Christian nation.
Is there any conservative, Fundamentalist Christian who does not agree with that statement?
The man who stated this obvious fact in a Muslim majority country then went to another Muslim majority country to state ‘I am a Christian’.
The Editor has some quibbles with the Obama speech. But they are offset at this stage by the momentous declaration of Christian faith of the current president of the United States.
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