Rafia Zakaria makes a profoundly necessary point about Obama’s “muslim speech” in Cairo. Not the content of it – that’s been done to death – but how muslim reactions to it throws particular Arab perceptions of Southasian issues into stark relief. In particular, this is a comment on how Arab muslims interpreted the parts of the speech that was directed at the Arab World to be of far greater import than the sections the President dedicted to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Given the reaction of some Arab commenters, you could well think Islam is all about the importance of being an Arab muslim. Unfortunately Arabs and Southasians are both guilty of promulgating this racist quackery.
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 to Middle Eastern Arabs.
One such commentator, Shibli 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 Arabiyya 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 fundraising 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 OIC for the crisis in Palestine, the crisis in Pakistan has failed to engage the empathy of the Muslim world.
For Southasian muslims, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is symbolically central to the perception of the Muslim struggle for self-determination and seperatism. Southasian muslims respond tearfully with loud histrionics and open wallets to morbid images of wounded Gazan children on TV charity adverts that interrupt their ingestion of Bollywood soap operas.
Southasian Islamists are adept at milking this sentimental imbalance to their advantage too. They are very good at directing muslim angst at the plight of Gazans to make political capital, raising funds by fleecing credulous muslims of “zakat donations” etc. As Rafia Zakaria notes:
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 to his promises regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
…
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.
Read her article in full.
12 Comments
I have to admit that, other than asking fellow Cairenes before and after ‘The Speech’ about their attitudes to Obama and the prospects for an enduring peace with Israel, I have neither read the whole speech nor watched the video.
Her (?) analysis of the indifference to Af-Pak. suffering is not without some justification in the Middle East, where, unsurprisingly, outside of the political realm, there is little acknowledgement of a geopolitical construct such as the Arab world, let alone a religiocultural/political Muslim one.
As regards the content of Obama’s speech and its significance for Muslims, something a friend of mine pointed out today gave me pause for thought: apparently, Obama made reference to Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey and the Ascent to Heaven (al-Isra’ wal-M’iraaj). My friend said that Obama’s pronunciation of Isra’ was akin to Ezra (cf. Qur’an’s assertion that the Jews take him to be the Son of God), something that did not go down too well. This, coupled with the fact that he is seen by some as having ‘reneged’ on his Islam, added to suspicion that Obama’s knowledge of the Middle East (read ‘Islamic history’ for many Arabs) was lacking; and it detracted from his quotation (s?) from the Qur’an.
Good post!
Some south-asians have such a inferiority complex that they not only look up to arabs but they start acting and behaving like them. Pathetic.
whipps cross lad
” My friend said that Obama’s pronunciation of Isra’ was akin to Ezra (cf. Qur’an’s assertion that the Jews take him to be the Son of God), something that did not go down too well. ”
Your friend is an idiot. Muslims call Ezra “Uzair” and most would be unaware of the western version of his name. He also is a Prophet to Muslims so his being mis-mentioned wouldnt be an issu.
Also Muslims realise Obama is an “outsider” in terms of his knoweldge
Ibn Khaldun
“Some south-asians have such a inferiority complex that they not only look up to arabs but they start acting and behaving like them. Pathetic”
If only they were like the Asians who act and behave like Englishmen and Americans due to inferiority complex
I’d prefer it if they could just be themselves or is that too much to ask for.
You seem to have “forgotten” the thousands of Muslim Arab mujahideen who gave their lives to help the Muslims of Afghanistan and Kashmir fight the invaders of their land
Ibn Khaldun
“I’d prefer it if they could just be themselves or is that too much to ask for.”
Says the guy named after a famous Tunisian Arab philospher
Can’t help it if my parents gave me an Arabic name.
You seem to have “forgotten” the thousands of Muslim Arab mujahideen who gave their lives to help the Muslims of Afghanistan and Kashmir fight the invaders of their land
Yes I have also heard Afghan friends complain bitterly that the Talibanisation of the mujahideen into obscurantist, women-hating Wahhabi-focused fundamentalists was due to the influence of these “Arab mujahideen” who went on to sanction the death of thousands more Afghan civilians by the use of terrorism.
So, the “Muslim Arab mujahideen” narrative is not exactly the pretty fairy story you would have us believe.
“Yes I have also heard Afghan friends complain bitterly that the Talibanisation of the mujahideen into obscurantist, women-hating Wahhabi-focused fundamentalists was due to the influence of these “Arab mujahideen” who went on to sanction the death of thousands more Afghan civilians by the use of terrorism.
So, the “Muslim Arab mujahideen” narrative is not exactly the pretty fairy story you would have us believe.”
Riiiight so you post an article about how Arabs dont care about non-Arab Muslims. When it is pointed out that in fact thousands of Arabs gave their lives in Afghanistan you criticise them for doing so.
Wow you hate Arabs!
Ibn Khaldun
“Can’t help it if my parents gave me an Arabic name.”
Your parents called you Ibn Khaldun?!?
Riiiight so you post an article about how Arabs dont care about non-Arab Muslims. When it is pointed out that in fact thousands of Arabs gave their lives in Afghanistan you criticise them for doing so.
And what of the millions of innocent Afghans who have been slaughtered, bombed, displaced or the lives and futures of millions of young Afghans wrecked as a result of the actions of the Taliban Arabs? Any thought for them? Did they ask these foreigners to come into their country in their thousands and turn it into their own private jihadi playground?
These jihadi tourists are as imperialistic and arrogant as the US in their venture into Iraq. So, what is the motivation for defending them exactly?
I wouldn’t be presumptive nor stupid enough to end this with the crass phrase “Wow you hate Afghans” but there you go.