Adrift in Arabia

Efraim Karsh
MEF
The Journal of International Security Affairs
Fall '10

Transforming America's relations with the Islamic world has been perhaps the foremost foreign policy issue through which President Obama has sought to set himself apart from his immediate predecessor. Having long downplayed his Muslim roots—going so far as to disguise not only his middle name, Hussein, but also to substitute Barack with the less conspicuous Barry early on in his career[1]—Obama has embraced them since taking office. As he explained in his much-ballyhooed June 2009 address to the Muslim World in Cairo:

I'm a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith... So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't.[2]

Reverting to standard "post colonial" rhetoric, the president squarely blamed the West for "the great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world." "The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars," he claimed,

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations... Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims… [culminating in] the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians."[3]

While there is no denying the widespread appeal of this argument, there is also no way around the fact that, in almost every particular, it is demonstratively, even invidiously, wrong.

(Read full article)

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