DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI critically analyses Barack Hussain Obama’s much talked about Cairo speech and concludes that the US president has ignored the basic issue – the Palestine problem – that has been confronting the world Muslims for decades together.
Has Mr. Barack Hussain Obama ignored the basic issue in his June 4 Cairo speech, targeting over a billion world Muslims? What is the fundamental question involved in the un-ending Israel-Palestine imbroglio? Is it the ever-continuing and ever-expanding construction of settlements on the usurped Palestinian soil? Would all the irritants between the disputants melt down the day the Israelis and the Palestinians agree to live side by side as Independent, Sovereign States?
Mr. Obama touched several important subjects, including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and nuclear weapons. Occasionally, he gave the impression of moderacy and accommodation. But he refused to be drawn in the causes, factors and why of what they call terrorism, which has several shades and colours. For example, terrorism in South Asia is totally different from what it is in Africa.
CONTENT-WISE
The tone and tenor of the U.S. President’s oration may be suave and soft. But content-wise he does not appear to be different from his predecessors. And perhaps, no occupant of the White House can afford to be downright honest, and straightforward enough to call a spade a spade.
Mr. Obama’s 4-day trip to West-Asia and Europe, of which his stay in Egypt was a significant one, was, in fact, aimed at refurbishing the Bush-tainted image of the United States as an anti-Islamic power. Otherwise too, the United States is trying to bury the hatchet visa-a-vis Latin America, Iran and the Muslim world at large. It was an essay in patch-up and a new beginning with Islam. To quote Mr. Obama: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims.” The point is: Has he succeeded in his ostensibly well-meaning odyssey?
For a new beginning and lasting ties, the U.S. President must know how the man-on-the-street in the Islamic world thinks about the United States and the West as a whole? Does a Muslim hate America or love it? What is the why and what of his attitude? And how America can correct the situation?
It would not be out of place to state that Arabs happen to be just a part of the Islamic monolith. They enjoy prominence simply because of their rich resources. The contribution of non-Arab Muslims to the promotion of Islam as a viable ideology is also much greater. And the Arabs themselves admit this fact.
CONSIDERED VIEW
The opinion of the man-on-the-street in the Islamic world is not juicy or palatable about the United States. He is of the considered opinion that America is a self-opinionated bully, believing in unilateral strike against the non-conformist states. The leadership-change in any sovereign State happens to be only a minor diplomatic error in America. The man on-the-Islamic-street believes that the U.S. is an expansionist power and practise hegemonism through cold war tactics. He refuses to agree with the pax-Americana policy. Its armed-to-the-hilt bases in the four corners of the world send chill down his spin.
MOTHER OF EVIL
Every thinking Muslim disapproves of the paid lobbies that Washington creates in foreign countries with ulterior motives. The Muslims abhor the motivated U.S. penetration into foreign intelligence set-ups, political think-tanks as well as armed forces.
The U.S. funding of wars, as we saw in the Gulf, and disowning of its protégés abroad does not go down his throat.
But the Mother of Evil is not all this. The Mother of all Evils is support, protection and promotion of Israel, which, to Muslims the world over, is a transplanted, rogue State. This is the basic issue, basic irritant and basic cause behind Muslim reaction against the unhelpful, provocative and less-than-fair foreign policy of Washington. This attitude has inspired the frustrated everywhere. With variations in degrees, the entire West follows the U.S. in pampering the British child lacking in legitimacy.
This support, protection, and promotion is not in consonance with the facts of history, logic and commonsense.
JUSTIFICATION
Let us, once again, try to explain the illogic behind the aberration. What was the legal or moral raison d’etre or locus standi of the Great Britain in providing the so-called homeland for the Jews on the land of the Palestinians? There is no rationale or justification of the step. The handing over of the Muslim land to the Jews was illegitimate in 1948 and is illegitimate in 2009 and would remain so in the days to come. Which law or logic entitled the Jew-obliged Brits to give away the Muslim lands to those who were not its rightful owners? The action was outrageous and continues to be so even today. This is a blot on the Mother of Democracy. Palestine belonged and belongs to the Palestinians in the manner Germany belongs to the Germans. That was the commonsense argument of Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Indian Nation.
Indian Muslims follow this correct line and put a counter-argument to the United States as well as the United Kingdom: Would the Brits and Americans agree if we say England and the United States belong to Russia and not to the U.K. and the United States. If the English and Americans protest too much, the Muslims ask the Brits and Americans to stop construction of settlements on the illegally occupied British and American land and simultaneously live, like good boys, side by side with London and Moscow as Independent and Sovereign states. Would this travesty of logic go down the throat of the Brits and Americans? Mr. Obama and Mr. Brown and their countrymen owe a cogent reply.
CROOKS AND FREAKS
Through the Orientalists, a sustained maligning campaign has been launched to prove Islam has horns on its head. But exceptions apart, it could not cut much ice. Now of late, in utter frustration, the world is being asked to believe Islam is the other name of terror, given to mayhem, bloodshed and what not. For more than 1400 years, Islam has been on the surface of the earth. How many examples its denunciators can cite to prove that Islam stands for anarchy? There are well over 50 Sovereign Muslim countries today. Has any of them been found blood-letting? It is only a few non-State crooks and freaks that indulge in the bloody pastime. And what has inspired them is the injustice done to them and their ideology. Does it prove Islam’s terrorist credentials?
POWERLESSNESS
One really does not know why America is powerless before Israel and its supporters in the country. Here is an example of the American timidity: The Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Ehud Olmert said in a speech in the Israeli southern town of Ashkelon on January 12, regarding how he influenced the U.S. vote in the U.N. on a resolution pertaining to the Gaza war: “In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said.
“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone.’ They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me.
“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.
“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour.”
We the world Muslims ask: Is it an equal, give and take, relationship?
The games that the original architects of terror are playing shows their short-sightedness, tampered with obduracy. Let them, after futile exercises in silencing the victims, show moral courage to own their blunders. If they are that serious, they should sincerely think in terms of relocation of Israel in their own lands.
FEAR THE DAY
Till date, they have succeeded in their bloody pastime because they inveigled the Arabs into believing that Palestine is a problem related to a piece of land. The Arabs also forgot that Palestine problem is basically a religious problem. It houses Jerusalem, which has the Quibla-i-Awwal of the one-fifth of humankind. By constantly dinning into the Arab ears that Arabs are not one but several nations, led them to believing that the Ummah has nothing to do with the said problem. Self-pleased with within their nation-states, the Arabs started behaving like communities. The Palestine problem is neither an Arab problem nor a problem of the Palestinians. It is a Muslim problem rather an Islamic problem. It is the problem of the world Muslims. And the short-sighted should fear the day when the over a billion strong segment of humanity starts thinking in these bellicose terms.