On June 4, 2009, at around 1.10 p.m. local time, President
Barack Hussein Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo University in Egypt.
The speech, much touted for days, even months, hit all the right notes.
In the never-ending series of analyses that ensued, expected
portions of the speech were praised. Nearly every constituency tuned to the
speech, from the Israelis to the Egyptians, was able to find something pleasing.
A spokesman for the Israeli government hoped the speech would mark the "opening
of a new era"; people on the Arab street praised the scolding President Obama
delivered against the perpetuation of Israeli settlements in occupied
territories.
The critiques of the speech were just as predictable. Numerous
commentators, both in the United States and in the Middle East, emphasised that
rhetoric alone cannot overcome the chasms created by war. Nearly all emphasised
the importance of following beautiful words with beautiful deeds. Some warned
that as speeches go, the president of the United States would be best served by
making this his last "speech" before following it up with the much awaited
changes in US policy that the world really awaits.
Groups like Hizbollah, the British Hizb ut Tahrir and Iran’s
supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, all insisted that "change and a new image
cannot be created by paying lip service to mottos".
While the speech itself was careful to include Pakistanis in the
"Muslim" world, it was interesting to see the responses of several Middle
Eastern anchors and commentators. Not only did many insist on focusing on the
"Arab" portions of the American president’s speech but several insisted that the
speech was in fact targeted exclusively towards Middle Eastern Arabs. One such
commentator, Shibley Telhami, who appeared both on American and Middle Eastern
networks, openly said that Arabs were not too interested in what was happening
in Pakistan and that the issue of Middle East peace was far more central.
This point, emphasised repeatedly in the coverage of Obama’s
speech by Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and other networks, should be worthy of note to
Pakistanis. Not only did several Arab anchors refuse to acknowledge the refugee
crisis and civil war in Pakistan as a pressing issue facing the Muslim world,
they quite indifferently discarded it as something inconsequential to the Arab
world.
This undoubtedly callous disregard with which Arabs view the
events taking place in Pakistan is emphasised not simply in their response to
President Obama’s speech but also in the failure of most Arab nations to respond
to the refugee crisis taking place in the nation. Unlike recent fund-raising
drives around the world for the people of Gaza following the harrowing Israeli
offensive earlier this year, there is paltry attention to the plight of refugees
languishing in camps in Pakistan. Unlike the millions of dollars collected by
Islamic charities for the people of Gaza and the money allotted by transnational
Muslim organisations such as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference for the
crisis in Palestine, the crisis in Pakistan has failed to engage the empathy of
the Muslim world.
So while much of the "Arab street" focused on the need for Obama
to follow his speech with actions on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, few
or, rather, none at all mentioned the necessity of similar follow-ups in the
Pakistani context. Even fewer considered the adequacy of the 200 million dollars
that were announced as additional allotments toward internally displaced persons
in Pakistan. There was no talk of whether American policies of empowering local
tribal leaders to fight the Taliban in various parts of Afghanistan would
facilitate Obama’s avowed project of either upholding human rights or improving
Muslim women’s access to education.
The extent of the Arab world’s disinterest in American policies
in Afghanistan and Pakistan is notable not as much for the alleged hypocrisy it
could expose in President Obama’s speech vis-à-vis American policy but, rather,
in the crude disjunction between the interest and influence of Arab issues on
the Pakistani psyche.
The centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Islamist
politics in Pakistan does not need to be recounted. Pakistanis have and continue
to donate millions of rupees for their Palestinian brothers suffering under
Israeli occupation. Similarly, the plight of Iraqis who have now suffered for
nearly a decade the ravages of a misguided war has played a crucial role in
fuelling anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
So complete is the Pakistani obsession with the plight of their
Arab brothers that in reacting to the speech itself, Pakistani politicians like
Imran Khan focused less on the mess at hand and more on the necessity and
ability of President Obama to answer his promises regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As mentioned before, there were few surprises in President
Obama’s speech. The rhetorical overtures he made are undoubtedly both necessary
and welcome to all those around the world ushered into the dregs of despair by
his predecessor. Clues to the future of America and the Muslim world however lie
less in the speech and more in the reaction to it. If Obama’s advisers assess
the reactions to the speech, they will be able to isolate the price of picking
fights with the Muslim world.
In noting the attention given to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis
not only by the Arab world but also by Muslims in South Asia, they would note,
for example, its central place in the Obama administration’s avowed project of
befriending the Muslim world.
At the same time, the inability of Arab Muslims to extend their
sympathy to (or open their pocketbooks for) their fellow Muslims in Pakistan
should provide some clues to the Obama administration regarding which Muslims
may be more easily ignored. Since the beginning of the Taliban onslaught in
Pakistan, not a single emergency conference has been organised by any group of
Muslim countries. Neither the Gulf states nor the benevolent Saudis have used
any mentionable sum of their oil largesse to aid the people of Malakand
languishing in camps.
Given the ease with which a tragedy affecting millions of
Pakistanis has been ignored by those Arab Muslims so venerated as
brothers-in-faith by Pakistanis, the recipe for which Muslims must be appeased
first must now be apparent to the world and undoubtedly to the United States.
(Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches
courses on constitutional law and political philosophy. This article was
published by the Pakistani newspaper, Daily Times, on June 6, 2009.)