President Obama's speech to the Turkish parliament Monday left Muslims across the United States stunned by the dramatic way he continues to build bridges with their brethren.
"He is uniquely qualified among all the American presidents to really reach out and change the mood of the relationship between America and the Muslim world," said Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani ambassador and now a professor of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, D.C. "He's the first president to talk about respect for the Muslim world."
In his speech, Obama recast an often adversarial U.S. relationship with Muslims into other terms - referring to friends or friendship 10 times. It was the most significant in a series of gestures to reach out to the Muslim community since his inaugural address, when he called for a "new way forward" with Muslims "based on mutual interest and mutual respect."
"The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam," Obama said to applause, according to a White House transcript of Monday's speech. "In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical, not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject, but also to strengthen opportunity for all its people."
Obama also tapped into his own unique heritage, which was a lightning rod in the campaign. Republicans used his middle name, Hussein, as a slur to suggest he was anti-American. At the time, Obama did relatively little outreach to Muslims, most notably not visiting a mosque while going to the sanctuaries of other faiths.
Embracing heritage
But on Monday, Obama, a Christian, continued a post-election pattern of emphatically embracing his heritage, which includes a Muslim father and stepfather and a childhood lived partly in Indonesia, a Muslim nation.
"The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans," he said in the speech. "Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them."
The statement is part of a long-term strategy that was outlined by the Obama campaign as early as August 2007, said Hady Amr, who was one of the Obama campaign's two official spokesmen to the American Muslim community.
"He views the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world as a security threat," said Amr, director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. "He and his advisers decided that he could be a transformative figure, and he's harnessing his heritage to be that transformative figure."
Obama's name alone could make it difficult for extremists to chant epithets at the American president, Amr said. In Muslim belief, Hussein was the grandson of Muhammad, who was given divine revelation, as is recorded in Islam's holy book, the Quran.
"It's even more difficult to be anti-American when the president of the United States is doing so much to be respectful and reach out to the Muslim world," Amr said.
Obama has used his presidency to reach out to Muslims in a number of ways.
In his inaugural address, he included Muslims in his description of the many people of faith of America. His first televised interview was to an Arabic-language news channel. He delivered a video statement to the people of Iran and now has addressed the parliament of a predominantly Muslim country, Turkey.
But it hasn't been just words.
Since his first day in office, Obama has taken steps on some issues that have particularly vexed the American Muslim community. He has announced that he would close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, get the U.S. military out of Iraq and ban the use of torture.
The array of statements and actions so early in his administration is being noted by American Muslims.
"It's phenomenal," said Munir Jiwa, director of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, a consortium of seminaries in Berkeley. "There's some comfort in knowing that he's trying to be consistent with what he says and does."
Still, the United States' contentious history with Muslim countries goes back many decades, and Obama is early in his presidency. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan are all places where Muslims have seen U.S. involvement as meddlesome or destructive.
In the United States, the Patriot Act, forced registration of many Muslim men in 2003, secret deportation of terrorism suspects to foreign prisons and the FBI's planting of informants in mosques have caused tension.
'Cautiously optimistic'
"These are actions that you can't just erase and pretend they don't exist," said Safir Ahmed, a former journalist and San Francisco-based media consultant for prominent Muslim organizations. "As much as we like hearing what Obama is saying, we're really cautiously optimistic."
Several Muslims interviewed Monday recognized that Obama might be putting his own political career in peril.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted March 26-29 found that 48 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam - higher even than in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Here's where the American public is going, and here's where Obama is going and trying to head it off," said Shahed Amanullah, editor and publisher of altmuslim.com. The Bush administration asked Amanullah for help in shaping dialogue with the American Muslim community.
"He's heading it off on a global level," Amanullah said. "He's starting at a core of the problem. The core of the problem is the crisis overseas."
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
