An open letter to President Obama
Do not fall for the libel that secularists are anti-Islamic and that liberal democrats are not true Muslims. Photo: AFP
Let me start by congratulating you on your historic address to the Muslim world at Cairo University yesterday. You promised us that it would be something special, and we were not disappointed. The message that you have sent to the Muslim world is clear and unequivocal: let us have a new beginning. You have extended the hand of friendship, with the promise to listen and to move forward in amity on a basis of mutual respect between the Muslim world and the US. The speech hit all the right notes, but more than anything you said, it was the sense that you truly respect Islam, are sympathetic to Muslim grievances, and are willing to sit down and talk as equals, that really resonated. But where do we go from here? Speeches are one thing, but concrete action is another. What we in the Muslim world are hoping for is a complete re-imagining of US-Muslim relations, and while respect is as good a place to start as anywhere else, the question remains as to how that will be manifested in terms of policy. Your speech laid out policy prescriptions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for the Middle East peace process and Iran, and spoke in visionary terms about helping to support education and innovation in the Muslim world. This is all well and good. But let us get down to the nitty-gritty about what needs to be done and what the fundamental change from the Bush years needs to be. The fundamental problem that stymied the Bush administration's outreach to Muslims was that the Bush administration was uncomfortable with the liberal democrats in Muslim countries. The liberal democrats were usually far too left-wing for them, and they were viscerally and vocally opposed to Bush's hawkish and unilateralist foreign policy (though, crucially, I would argue that liberal democrats in the Muslim world are anti-Republican, not anti-American, per se). Perhaps the Bush administration was simply more comfortable with the more right-wing, conservative, traditionalist elements in these countries. I guess they had a lot in common. But while this was fine during the Cold War, it is time for America to update its play-book. Perhaps it was hard for the Bush administration to switch mind-sets and realise the need to seriously rethink its relations with those that the US has been funding for decades and who until 9/11 seemed like loyal allies, but the time for such action is long overdue. Perhaps the Bush administration succumbed to the conventional wisdom that, at least in the Arab world, the liberal democrats were all losers who had no popular base. For these reasons, all over the Muslim world, the Bush administration conspicuously failed to join hands with the real democratic reformers, and, till the end, continued to do business with retrograde and reactionary forces and regimes who, till the end, continued to play the US for fools (see, e.g., Pakistan). You should not make this mistake. There is a lot of rhetoric coming out of your administration that you do not want to demonise all Muslims and that you wish to reach out to moderate Muslims, as indicated in your speech. This is all well and good. There is always room for dialogue with well-meaning people who share one's values and aspirations. Certainly there are religious leaders and religious parties in the Muslim world who it is worth forging alliances and understandings with and who can be partners for peace, justice, and equality. But you should always remember who your true friends are. Those who would deny women an education or equal rights, those who preach the moral inferiority of the West, those who have nothing but contempt for Western values and traditions -- these people are not America's friends, and they never will be. The people you need to reach out to in Muslim countries, the real change agents, the ones doing God's work, are the liberal democrats, who continue to fight tirelessly for tolerance and human dignity, for equality and justice for all. You must not fall for the libel that secularists are anti-Islamic and that liberal democrats are not true Muslims. If you would not want us to think that the Pat Robertsons of the world speak for all Christians, please do not reach out to retrogressive Muslim leaders of the same ilk. President Obama, you are a man of faith, but you are also a liberal democrat who believes in fundamental and universal concepts of justice and equality. The two are no more mutually exclusive in the Muslim world than they are in the West. And it is people like this, like yourself, that you need to reach out to in countries like Bangladesh, if your outreach to the Muslim world is to truly make the world a better place and not fall on deaf ears.
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