First, it is too early to tell, of course, but it is possible that the speech will come to be seen as a landmark speech for Obama. Quite a few speeches by presidents, princes and kings are pro forma events which recycle bland messages. Not the Cairo speech. The address is very substantial both in length (55 minutes in delivery) and in content. All of the indications are that Obama himself put a lot of work into preparing the speech and felt a high degree of ownership of it. The speech should thus be seen as an important statement of the president’s own views on how the United States should work with Muslim countries.
Second, the overall tone of the speech marks a very sharp change in direction from the hectoring stance too often evident during the Bush administration. The word ‘terrorism’, for example, does not occur once in the entire speech of 6,000 words. Moreover, Obama and his speechwriters have obviously worked very hard to reach out to many different groups. The address is full of symbolic and carefully crafted references to different religions, different groups, and different interests (including, of course, to interests back home in the US).
Third, the speech is really a series of observations on seven distinct sub-topics. And the attention devoted to each sub-topic varies significantly as well: violent extremism (about 900 words); relations between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world (1030 words); nuclear weapons and Iran (330 words); democracy (370 words); religious freedom (340 words); women’s rights (240 words); and development and opportunity (550 words).
But fourth, it needs to be recognised that President Obama was really talking just as much about America’s problems in the Middle East as about Muslim issues in other countries. Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, writing in The Jakarta Post in a comment headed ‘Obama speaks to the Arabs, not the Muslim world’ says that the address ‘felt more like a call to the Arab world which represents 20 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, than the Muslim world in general.’ Suryodiningrat argues that the presentation in Cairo ‘was a confusion of Arabism with Islam’ and contained ‘the dangerous mixing of politics and religion.’
And, furthermore, only some of the seven topics have resonance for Muslim countries like Indonesia. As Suryodiningrat notes, ‘At least three – democracy promotion, religious freedom and women’s rights – of his seven points are more relevant to a region whose governments are bastions of despotism than the average Indonesian.’
So whilst the Cairo address is a quite remarkable attempt by President Obama to reach out to the Muslim world, the messages it conveys are of more relevance to Arab Muslim countries than to Muslim countries elsewhere. But in one symbolic sense at least, the speech is certainly important for Indonesia: Obama takes time to single Indonesia out for specific mention four times in his address, carefully noting his own personal links with the country! This must surely be the first time in many decades that any US president has given such attention to Indonesia on the global stage. This is a welcome acknowledgement by Obama of Indonesia’s place within the broader Muslim world.
Thank you for your very important reminder that Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country. I can’t understand why such a significant fact is so consistently overlooked in world politics
Obama indeed mentioned Indonesia four times in his Cairo speech. But an American president, no matter how eloquent he may be, and Obama is certainly that, does not have the power to give Indonesia a more important role in the Muslim world. Two statements about Indonesia’s status are irrefutable: it has the largest population in the Islamic world, and it is located at its periphery. Unfortunately, while the first fact is cited time and time again, it is the second fact that is far more significant. A week ago, I attended a talk at the ANU given by Prince Turki bin Faisal, former Saudi intelligence head and ambassador to the UK and to the US. In answer to a question why Hindus could not build a temple in Saudi Arabia, Turki replied that the Prophet had said that Arabia would always be a Muslim country. Now it was hundreds of years after the Prophet’s death that Islam reached Indonesia. This matters. No matter how small a proportion of the world’s Muslims live there, it is hard to see how the Middle East will ever cease to be the centre of the Islamic world. Arabia holds the two most sacred shrines in Islam, a third is in Jerusalem, others are in Iraq. Indonesia has none, except those of local significance, such as graves of the Wali Songo. The size of Indonesia’s population has never translated into much influence in the Middle East. This is no doubt regrettable but also not too difficult to understand. I know of no Indonesian Muslim thinker who has rivalled the scholars of the Middle East. Middle Easterners do not flock to Indonesian educational institutions to study Islam. The reverse is the case. Pilgrims go to Mecca and Medina, not to cities on Java or Sumatra. The Indonesian leader who had the greatest influence in the Middle East and in the Muslim world as a whole was unquestionably Sukarno, who acquired that influence without trying to exploit any Muslim identity to which he laid claim. He was influential as a leader of the non-aligned world.
One of the four citations of Indonesia in Obama’s speech occurred in what is probably its worst paragraph. This is the paragraph in which, in a bid to persuade the Palestinians to forsake violence, he denounced violence altogether. Having earlier acknowledged that America itself was born in revolution ‘against empire’, Obama nevertheless said that ‘resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed’. One wonders whether the American Revolution somehow did not consist of ‘resistance through violence and killing’, and whether the American Civil War somehow was unnecessary for the liberation of America’s slaves, who later maintained ‘a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding’. This argument against violence also flies in the face of Indonesia’s history. Indonesia too was born in revolution ‘against empire’. Does Obama think that the Indonesians should have forsaken violence in 1945 when the Dutch were intent on restoring their colonial rule? If they had followed his advice, maybe Obama would have gone to school in the Dutch East Indies in the 1960s.
My thanks to Ken Ward for his key points. I agree with the main arguments he makes. But his observations about centre and periphery prompt some additional thoughts.
Ken notes that Indonesia “is located at the periphery” of the Islamic world. Yes — and no. Without wishing to quibble, it surely depends on how one defines “the Islamic world.” This is a fairly important issue. It seems clear that there are many millions of Muslims who do not accept that the Arab Islamic world is at the centre of everything that relates to Islam. There are many millions of Muslims who would wish to see the modern Islamic world in a much broader way with reference to social, political and economic issues as well as religious characteristics.
Some population facts are interesting. Interesting figures on Muslim countries by population are available on Wikipedia. Here, in round terms, are the top ten Muslim countries (data are for 2007):
(million)
In the sense of “periphery” that Ken refers to (that is, in terms of access to holy sites and centres of Islamic religious thought) the top four countries are all on the periphery. But they make up more than 40% of the Muslim world in population terms. Thus depending on how one sees things, issues such as major economic, political, and strategic matters that affect any of these countries can become issues for the wider Islamic world as well. Afghanistan, for example, accounts for around 2% of the global Muslim population and contains few holy sites but is still widely regarded as an important Muslim country. All of the ten countries shown have major problems of poverty so the need for sustained economic improvement concerns would seem to be important for all of them, as well as for much of the rest of the Muslim world.
My own conclusion is that Ken is certainly quite right when he points to the importance of the Middle East for the Muslim world in terms of religious significance. However, observers who note that president Obama’s speech seemed more directed to Arab Muslim issues rather than the wider Muslim world are surely right as well. Ken is critical, for example, of Obama’s comments about violence. I would add Obama’s comments about development and opportunity to the list of items that seemed unsatisfactory in the speech. His comments about development and opportunity verged on the trivial (he offered up a few tiny aid projects) and really made no attempt at all to address extremely challenging issues of poverty and living standards which affect much of the Muslim world.