Plasma Pool

U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech “to the Muslim world” from Cairo University earlier this week has provoked a variety of predictable reactions from the right, most of which impugn Obama for admitting points of view other than that of U.S. interest when thinking through global affairs. By this rationale, Obama’s admission that the Islamic societies of the past were crucial to generating and preserving the ideas that underpin what we call “the west” becomes nothing more than a sheepish “apology” to “terrorists.” Which terrorists our president is supposedly apologizing to of course remains opaque—typical of the flatfooted and juvenile conservative criticism of Obama’s foreign policy thus far. The National Review’s Michael Rubin didn’t even bother to view Obama’s speech before penning his takedown. Cute.

The central thesis of the speech was that the United States needs to redefine its relationship with the Muslim world. And while it is hard to be against strengthening our relations with any group, this approach does contain a trap. It posits the existence of something that does not really exist. With over a billion members, “the Muslim world” encompasses a group so geographically, culturally, ideologically, and ethnically diverse as to be almost a meaningless term.

Further, as some critics have rightly pointed out, despite the occasional acknowledgement that Muslims may exist in Asia, Africa or the United States, the speech was primarily addressed to the Muslims of the greater Middle East. Not only does this unintentionally marginalize Muslims who are not Arab or Persian, upon further examination the focus on that region reminds us that our problems are not with Muslims per se but with often deeply divided subsets of that group with other sect-related, national, tribal or other identities. This in turn underscores why repairing relations with Islam is not a highly meaningful goal from a practical standpoint (because Islam is hardly monolithic and our relationship with it is hardly central to solving the problems we face).

While the purpose of the speech seemed to be to try to engender better will toward the United States and our new administration…and while it may have succeeded in this respect…from a diplomatic perspective one can only get so far by appealing to an entity that doesn’t really exist.

Speakers appeal to entities that don’t exist all the time. That’s the primary mode in politics, not the exception. It’s facile to say that Obama “mistakes” a collection of a certain sorts of things for one single other sort of thing. Any statement about anything does precisely the same thing by positing a subject so obviously porous as to be fanciful. The American Public. American Catholics. American Jews. American History. Floridians. Believers. Atheists. Atheism. The Rational Actor. Senior Citizens. College Students. Muslims. Gay History. Every single one of these is an inexcusably gross simplification of the many discrete things they claim to encompass—but that’s all we have. There is nothing else. This is inherent in the discourse of politics.

Algebra

Rothkopf says that “With over a billion members, ‘the Muslim world’ encompasses a group so geographically, culturally, ideologically, and ethnically diverse as to be almost a meaningless term.” True. Also entirely irrelevant. Does Rothkopf genuinely believe that Obama, whose experience with Islam is primarily based in the portion of the Muslim world Rothkopf sees Obama as marginalizing, doesn’t understand that addressing anything to the “Islamic” or “Muslim” anything is reductionist? Calling someone else on being reductionist in the way that one must be to say anything vaguely politically useful is one of the favored argumentative moves today among left-leaning intellectuals who like to think they’re speaking truth to power. Self-styled provocateur Stanley Fish, who recently chided progressive jurists for using the term “empathy” in earnest, has made his late career of it.

This is not to say that Rothkopf is flatly incorrect about Obama’s simplification. He’s not. But to make his argument, Rothkopf must simplify Obama’s supposed simplification. Saying that the fact that Obama spoke mostly of the Middle East with the descriptor “Islamic” marginalizes Asian Muslims, for instance, is silly in the sense that Obama spoke of the traditions of Islamic cultures over tens of centuries. He didn’t limit himself, that is, to today’s “Muslim world.” References to the genesis of algebra don’t have much to do with contemporary Indonesia. Islam spread throughout the “Dark Ages” and onward—i.e., around the time our western cultural ancestors were spreading Christianity—so Rothkopf faulting Obama for speaking of “Islamic history” in a way that privileges the Middle East is a bit like someone faulting me for failing to treat contemporary American political populism when talking about the explosive political situation among thirteenth century English peasants. Silly.

No doubt Rothkopf is motivated by sincere concerns, if bizzare ones. (Does he really think that Obama’s attempting to foster a “cozy relationship…between [church and state]” at a policy level?) But these concerns are rooted in a stark misapprehension of what Obama’s attempting to do. American commentators, and often historians, are too frequently unable to think outside their present.