Napoleon, Obama and revisiting the Cairo speech

By Dr. Hatem Bazian
AMP Chairman
First published on worldbulletin.net

On Tuesday, January 28, 2014, President Barack Obama gave another State of the Union address and the world political leadership was also listening to decipher the impacts of any new policy announcements coming from the White House. Given this occasion, rather than focus on this new address, I wanted to revisit a much more critical speech that was directed at the Muslim world shortly after the President’s resounding victory in the 2008 elections. During his 2008 presidential campaign, an artistic rendering of Obama’s face with the bolded word ‘Hope’ became an iconic image and message that spread across much of the world. In fact, real change was oversold abroad to attract and reduce hostilities directed at the US after the failure of Bush’s “shock and awe” strategy. The Cairo speech was a high point for many in the Muslim world due to the expectations of “a new beginning.” As we usher in the sixth year of Obama’s presidency, it is time to look back at the speech and do so with a profound comparison to a similar strategy and speech given by Napoleon Bonaparte I to Al-Azhar’s scholars, during the unprovoked invasion of Egypt. The comparison is interesting and timely due to themes used by both Obama and Bonaparte and the need to employ such a strategy in the first place is instructive.

 Bonaparte’s “Speaking Islam” to Muslims

On July 1, 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte I lead an unprovoked invasion into Egypt landing at the shores of Alexandria and eventually managing a brief but precarious conquest of the country. The French conquest was different than others of earlier times due to the inclusion of a group of 167 scientists to help record and study Egypt like never before and to serve as a point of contact with the native population. Edward Said marks this as the auspicious beginnings of modern Orientalism. Also unique was Napoleon’s efforts in Egypt to cast the campaign as a defense of and for Islam against the despotic rule of the Mamluks in an attempt to rally the Egyptian population to his side and allow selective use of military force against some Muslims. Thus, the “good and bad” Muslim frame for colonial and imperial projects was born. Napoleon issued a Proclamation in Arabic to the Egyptian population:
“Inhabitants of Egypt! When the Beys tell you the French are come to destroy your religion, believe them not: it is an absolute falsehood. Answer those deceivers, that they are only come to rescue the rights of the poor from the hands of their tyrants, and that the French adore the Supreme Being, and honor the Prophet and his holy Koran.

All men are equal in the eyes of God: understanding, ingenuity, and science, alone make a difference between them: as the Beys, therefore, do not possess any of these qualities, they cannot be worthy to govern the country.
Yet are they the only possessors of extensive tracts of land, beautiful female slaves, excellent horses, magnificent palaces! Have they then received an exclusive privilege from the Almighty? If so, let them produce it. But the Supreme Being, who is just and merciful towards all mankind, wills that in future none of the inhabitants of Egypt shall be prevented from attaining to the first employments and the highest honors.—The Administration, which shall be conducted by persons of intelligence, talents, and foresight, will be productive of the happiness and security. The tyranny and avarice of the Beys have laid waste Egypt, which was formerly so populous and well cultivated.

The French are true Mussulmen. Not long since they marched to Rome, and overthrew the Throne of the Pope, who excited the Christians against the professors of Islamism (The Mahometan religion). Afterwards they directed their course to Malta, and drove out the unbelievers, who imagined they were appointed by God to make war on the Mussulmen. The French have at all times been the true and sincere friends of the Ottoman Emperors, and the enemies of their enemies. May the Empire of the Sultan therefore be eternal; but may the Beys of Egypt, our oppressors whose insatiable avarice has continually excited disobedience and insubordination, be trodden in the dust, and annihilated!”1

The difficulties faced by Napoleon and his forces in the campaign called for an appeal to the highest Islamic authorities in the land; the 60 religious scholars who taught at Al-Azhar University. Napoleon invited all sixty to an audience with him while granting them full military honor and pageantry, the like of which they had never seen before. He spent the meeting expressing an “admiration for Islam, Mohammed and veneration for the Qur’an, with which he seemed perfectly familiar.” In a letter dating from 1798 and addressed to a shaykh, Napoleon expresses the desire “to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.”
The efforts at appeasement through selective employment of Islam’s religious text paid-off for Napoleon and the Egyptian population through the scholars’ intervention became less hostile and distrustful of the occupiers. A shift in attitudes and governing ease did not go un-noticed and from this point forward French rule in Egypt was to be carried out through the “Orientalist and the religious Islamic leaders, who they could win over; any other politics was too expensive and foolish.” In the Egypt campaign Napoleon made sure to translate all relevant documents into the Arabic language and for this purpose brought the first printing press into the country; thus helping launch the “modern” press in the region.

At the turn of the 19th century both France and Britain were competing to secure a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean due to the strategic location it holds for trade and access routes to shipment of products that came from India. Egypt and Palestine took center stage in this strategic game between the two major powers, whoever controlled one or both secured their ascendancy and dominance while causing difficulties for all others. From the perspective of the Muslim populations in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, the arrival of Napoleon was the first such return of Western powers since the first Crusade of 1095 and their eventual eviction from the area around 1291. Even though at the core Napoleon’s campaign motivation was not religious and different; for the local population this did not matter the least since historical memories and experiences from the Crusades had not been easily forgotten.

Napoleon’s campaign and engagement with Egypt, Palestine and Syria arrived at a time of weakness and internal strife across many parts of the Ottoman territories, which enabled many a Western power to encroach upon the outlaying peripheries and strike alliances with disenchanted ethnic and religious communities. The Ottomans, known at the time as the sick man of Europe, were made sicker with medicine applied internally through cutting-off the peripheries from the central state and heavy debt burden managed externally in such a way to rest more control of vast territories, trade routes and resources. Even before the arrival of Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, the French were able to establish for themselves the status of Protectorate of the East for the Christian populations through the Capitulation treaties signed with the weakened Ottomans. Furthermore, upon arrival in Egypt Napoleon called on the Jews of the East to join his cause and in return he offered them a homeland in Palestine. The Jewish population in the Ottoman provinces rejected the offer and viewed it as an opportunistic move by Napolean that would sour their good standing in the region.

More than anything else Napoleon’s campaign in 1798, and the 167 embedded Orientalist scholars have managed to shape the epistemology related to everything Eastern including Islam, Muslims and “our” relations with the “Muslim world.” The divisions of East-West, civilized-uncivilized, rational-irrational, democratic-despotic, freedom of women-oppressive toward women, progressive looking religious tradition-backward looking religious tradition, industrious-lazy and dependent, and innovative-imitative to name a few, were brought to crystallization during and after this campaign. Up to this day the same epistemology is deployed and acted upon in policy formation including the 2009 speech given by President Obama in Cairo.

Obama’s Speech: Muslim and Arab American Inclusiveness
On June 4, 2009, some two hundred and eleven years after Napoleon’s encounter with the 60 scholars of Al-Azhar, another gathering was held, this time at Cairo University and a speech was delivered by US President Barack Obama echoing the same set of Orientalist ideas regarding governance of the “Muslim world” that had been articulated prior in 1798. At the time of the speech, I did stay up late at night to listen into the early morning hours, but was struck by mixed emotions and conflicting thoughts as President Obama’s speech to the “Muslim World” continued.

My mixed emotions had to do with the fact that I voted for President Obama in the 2008, election and felt at the time that he would be the better choice domestically, but would bring limited change on the fundamentals of American foreign policy and in particular the “Middle East.” On the war front, the majority of the country wanted out of Iraq and President Obama understood and supported the sentiments, which he rode to victory. His effort was not an anti-war or peace centered agenda; rather a pragmatic choice and a military shift to Afghanistan and away from Iraq. Furthermore, I felt before the elections and more so afterward that President Obama and his foreign policy team would not depart from the existing framework on the Palestine-Israel conflict despite empty demands to stop the construction of settlements.

Another element of my mixed emotions had to do with President Obama being the first African American president in the country. Having been part of the long struggle for civil and human rights, I did want him to succeed in order to make a lasting mark that would open doors for many others. One has to put themselves in African Americans shoes to appreciate the significance of the moment. After such long struggles, slave rebellions, de-humanization, lynching, Jim Crow and segregation, death and destruction, a justice system that is nothing but a system of injustice and a public education system in the inner city designed to fail and maintain structures of race and class, President Obama is an affirmation of all these collective experiences, which were not in vain and which could potentially unlock the imprisoned and tortured possibilities for all generations to come. I desired success for him, but at the same time I owed him, those who came before, those who continue to struggle and future generations. My honest feeling was the hope that real change would materialize in the future.

I was not a naïve person today or in 2008 and 2012, for voting for Obama and I do not believe that one person will be able to change a Military Industrial Complex economy and a superpower vested in expansion and reach beyond its borders. We are in a two-party system and the Republican candidates in both elections were far more committed to war and to unconditional support for Israel than Obama, at least in his public statements. Indeed, support for Israel is the third rail in US domestic politics and both parties are not ready to sacrifice their electoral interests by taking on Israel’s domestic power base as well as the relative weakness of Arab and Muslim political institutions in America. Furthermore, Arab and Muslim Americans are far too weak, divided, ill-organized and highly underfunded to mount a serious challenge to pro-Israel activists in both parties. This may change in the future, but we are still many years away from this political transformation.
It took me some time to write this, and this essay is few years removed from the speech. I had to work through the conflicting emotions and my own analysis of the speech and consider the various feedbacks that I have gotten from a wide spectrum of the Muslim and Arab American communities since.

For large sections of the American-Muslim and Arab-American communities, the speech was very inclusive and was met by celebrations and accolades since the President affirmed their membership in the American society by delivering greetings from all 7 million of them to the rest of the “Muslim world.” Many Muslims and Arabs in America viewed the speech from an assimilation-integration lens, and as such felt included at the highest levels like no other time since the events of September 11. Their response to the speech was celebratory for achieving, in the minds of many, a seat at the big diverse dinner table named America, but instead, they are actually on the menu. Some maintained that we should be realistic and understand the limitations that President Obama is facing and the message he delivered was the best that could be expected at the time. In support of this view, some pointed out that Muslim and Arab American staff members in the Obama administration contributed to the language used in the speech, which was considered a further sign of inclusiveness and openness on the part of the President.

Muslims and Arabs are part of America as America is part of them, not because the President or any other person in the White House or national institutions bestowed recognition upon them, symbolically important and significant as that may be; rather for the mere fact that they are members of this society by choice, and for living their lives as they see fit in agreement or dissent to policies that affect them or the world they inhabit. The depravity, discrimination and, to a certain sense, criminalization of Arabs and Muslims, as a class, since September 11, 2001, makes any positive references a joyous occasion for many and more so when it is the “most powerful man” in the world, President Obama uttering them. However, I am of the opinion that Muslims and Arab Americans were asked to become partners in managing and possibly solving imperial problems resulting from errors or worse, illegal strategies related to majority Muslim states and some are ready to step-up to the plate.

Yes, the President did speak of Muslim and Arab American contributions to American society, but the place and the time for praise was a contradiction considering that Obama up to this date has not visited an American Mosque nor wanted to be photographed in close proximity to one during the 2008 and 2012 elections. The inclusion was on the basis of a foreign policy agenda and to bring them into service as a bridge to an increasingly skeptical and defiant Arab and Muslim populations across the world that was exposed to the real face of American military power.

We must be honest and define inclusiveness at this stage for what it is; a role in managing an imperial crisis involving Muslim and Arab majority states where the US has great economic and political interests. We are in the imperial court because of the interests in faraway lands and not for the diversity of food or clothing or facial features we bring to America’s power elite! In return for this service, Muslim and Arab Americans are offered middle or upper middle class access and the ability to live the ‘American dream.’ The expectation is that no critique of America as America shall be given or any attempts to reform or alter militarism or the Military Industrial Complex, or to dare to ask questions about the need for America to be on another’s land to bring raw materials or to maintain and expand our consumer appetite across all classes and racial groups. It is: be what you want as long as you accept America as it has been constructed by the Military Industrial Complex and the corporate machines that translate the human being into commodified entities auctioned to the highest bidder. Welcome to inclusiveness and integration! We made it into the American dream!

“On a New Beginning” and Cartography of Power
I waited for the speech to begin, switching between Arabic and English channels to see if someone would speak before Obama and what the line-up would be on stage. Nothing happened until the President walked alone out onto the stage. I was struck by the lack formalities in the form of an introduction and that no Egyptian escorted him to the awaiting audience. I understand not wanting the now deposed dictator Hosny Mubarak due to his record, but the appropriate person should have been the President of Cairo University. I recall Columbia’s University President following the appropriate protocol by delivering the introduction of Iran’s president, though it was an extremely insulting and offensive introduction in bad taste. I asked why no one introduced President Obama. Was this the Egyptian decision, which I doubted at the time, or the strict guidelines from the US administration? Was the President of Cairo University consulted on this matter or did the US administration coordinate with Mubarak regarding the exclusion of the university’s leadership? At the time it was explained that this was his style, which is the point. It was an American show stage managed and dictated to the Egyptian’s and not dissimilar to Napoleon’s gathering with Al-Azhar scholars to inform them of his plans.

The symbolism was very profound and alarming since the speech was titled “On a New Beginning.” The exclusion of any local dignitary to introduce the president conveyed in it an arrogance of power. It would have provided an appropriate grounding to the event had the President of Cairo University welcomed Obama to the stage after a brief introduction in Arabic, but it was not the case. In addition, the stage behind and to the side was completely empty, no university seal or pageantry or anything of this standard was included. Aside from the US and Egyptian flags and flowers, it did appear odd considering all the hype surrounding the event. The event’s structure implied that no one was equal or up to the task to share the stage with the most powerful man in the world. Furthermore, it appeared as if the Egyptians and the audience should be content that President Obama even gave them the light of day, let alone treating them as equals. On the contrary, this was an unequal encounter the power was displayed in words and deeds!

Viewing this from another perspective, would any Arab or Muslim leader visiting the US be given the right to gather all the leaders within the American society, be granted live uninterrupted coverage for a fifty-five minute speech in Arabic and to be carried by most if not all television and radio stations and have no one speak before, during or after? Also, would the invite list be handled by the visiting Muslim leader with the orders given before arrival to release African American and Native American political prisoners, who were tortured by the government so they can attend the important lecture informing them of the agenda moving forward?
You would agree with me that this would not be possible, let alone contemplated, in late night comedy shows. Thus the event reeked of American power and should be viewed in the same light as Napoleon’s gathering of Al-Azhar scholars seeking their cooperation in pacifying their own countrymen and women after facing stiff resistance while arriving with guns and bombs to “shock and awe” the Egyptian into submission. In the 1798, encounter Napoleon’s Orientalist scholars translated his communication to Arabic thus coming closer to the subjects of his conquest. President Obama’s team at the time of the speech outdid this feat by providing the text in no less than eight languages spoken in Muslim majority states including Arabic, Persian and Urdu to name the obvious. The event should be viewed through Orientalism lens; both the classical and the modern.

Immediately after the speech I recalled Edward Said’s Orientalism and contemplated a response that takes the long history of entanglement into account and as a spring board. The content for me was based on refined Orientalist assumptions and did not depart much from it. To go beyond the staging and the presentation into the actual text of the speech it is important for us to ground ourselves in Said’s clarifications of what he meant by the term Orientalism:
“Therefore, Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of “interests” which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts and values), power moral (as with ideas about what “we” do and what “they” cannot do or understand as “we” do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is-and does not simply represent-a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world.”2

The text of the speech is still available on the website link provided here and can be downloaded directly for a better understanding and for following further my arguments below. In the speech, President Obama touched on seven key issues related to the “great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world,” while weaving rich references to both Islamic history and Qur’anic text, that raised far more questions and contradictions than bestowed immediate answers. The key areas addressed in the fifty-five minute speech covered violent extremism and US responses to it, including the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and torture, the Palestine-Israel conflict and the “peace process,” threats of Iran’s nuclear development, democracy in Muslim majority states, minority religious freedoms, women’s rights, and economic development and opportunity.

In my view the speech was intended to shore-up US standing in the eyes of Arabs and Muslim majority states after Bush managed to create an aversion to America’s agenda among many with his “shock and awe” in Iraq and Afghanistan and the unrestrained use of power. The damage done in Bush’s years made the ability of the US to carry forth with its agenda and pursuit of its national interest much more difficult and to a certain extent resulted in a counter response from the regular person on the street. Such aversion to US power was not confined to Arab or Muslim populations; rather it was a global phenomenon including Europeans, Africans, Central and South Americans.

The appeal to the “Arab” or “Muslim” street is still at the core of a public relations campaign directed at easing the difficulties faced in pushing ahead with current or future US policies including the expanded wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as containment or confrontation of Iran and Hezbollah through the management of the Syrian conflict, Lebanon’s fragmentation and rolling back Hamas’ fortunes in Occupied Palestine by militarizing the PA under Abbas and continues to strengthen relations with the Egyptian military.

The speech did not offer details as to future policies but it did mark a shift in the United States and its proposed engagement. The events of September 11, 2001, ushered the United States into preemptive war, regime change and spreading democracy in the Middle East, a strategy advocated by neo-conservatives who were very well placed in Bush’s administration. After two major wars, a regime change in Iraq based on lies and fabrications originating from Dick Cheney’s Office, torture photos from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, rendition, as well as failure to keep or expand an international coalition in pursuit of the strategy-the American public made a choice to change course and elected President Obama. What this speech articulates is the new cartography of American power, the national interests and clear shift into selective diplomatic engagement with Muslim majority states while maintaining existing hard nose military strategy intact through the utilization of drone warfare. The strategy mirrors Napoleon’s approach of selective use of military power while winning the hearts and minds of the masses with references to bygone glorious histories and choice sprinklings from sacred texts.

The critical topic addressed by the president was violent extremism and the war in both Afghanistan and Pakistan directed at Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The president mentioned that the US was “partnering with a coalition of forty-six countries” to bring forth a success against the extremists, “and despite the costs involved America's commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists.” Furthermore the President wanted to differentiate the extremist from the rest of the Muslims by declaring that “their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism - it is an important part of promoting peace.” We agree on the diagnostics of present day extremism, but since the President wanted to “face these tensions squarely” and to “speak as clearly and plainly” then we must demand a better understanding of the phenomena by tracing its roots. It is not sufficient to say we have a problem and tensions; rather a focus on the history, causes and developments that got all of us to this point.

Derek Gregory in his important book, The Present Colonial, argues that the colonial power constructs a dual lens in its relations with the colonized, which is seen in amnesia to historical record on the one hand, and innocence as to the consequences of policies pursued in distant lands on the other. Thus President Obama expressed both by erasing the record by a vague reference to colonialism and the Cold War then jumping forward into the innocence of the imperial citizenry. The roots of extremism are linked to our policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the “Middle East” in general and due to attempts to “roll-back” Soviet power during the Cold War culminating in the occupation of Afghanistan and containment or reversal of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which called for mobilization of a distorted Sunni Islamic sentiment that viewed both as manifestation of disbelieve requiring intervention by military means if necessary. As Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul, Afghanistan and Khomeini landed triumphantly in Tehran’s airport, the need for a strategic response in the halls of US and Middle Eastern power centers were a foregone conclusion.

By mobilization of reactionary Sunni Muslim sentiments by US and leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Pakistan and North Africa a two front war was unleashed and directed at the Soviets in Afghanistan and the emerging Shia state in Iran. The foot soldiers in both of these were Sunni Muslims recruited, trained and funded by Arab and Muslim governments with the explicit support and facilitation by our own CIA not to mention various European powers. Concurrently, the US was engaged in covert, as well as an open war against leftist movements and Christian Liberation Theologians in Central America with then newly elected President Reagan, sparing no cost to bring about the global defeat of the “evil empire” and the “Mullahs” in Iran. Rolling back the Iranian revolution did not move as hoped for thus the next best thing was a containment strategy involving a pro-longed war with Iraq that could exhaust the revolution’s resources while re-energizing classical and historical Sunni-Shia animosity as well as Arab-Persian tensions.

Context and history are important and a vague reference only reinforces the amnesia toward US power and manipulation of events and states distant and near. Yes, extremism in all its form is a danger, but what makes the same phenomena with the same cast of individuals acceptable one day and rejected the next is the fact that Americans are being killed by those we trained to kill Russians and Iranians! I am not underestimating the role or the agenda of Al-Qaeda; rather a demand to put all the parts on the table and not leave a big portion out because it might be inconvenient. Also, before the speech in Egypt, President Obama paid a visit to Saudi Arabia. This would have been the time to share with all of us the role the country played in the development of extremism to serve our global strategic agenda in the past and the current tasks assigned to them in the effort to contain opposition and resistance to real democratic trends in the region.
Amnesia and innocence pertaining to the role of the US and Europe in the Muslim and Arab world from colonization’s divide and conquer to securing markets and selling useless weapons, and from the theft of Palestine to the stealing of oil all is omitted from the record. The President’s speech was an imperial lecture given to Muslim and Arab audiences to highlight their inadequacies and order them to undertake corrective steps, which cover the same set of topics that have occupied the better time of Orientalists for the past two centuries. The “incapacity” of the Muslim and Arab subject to confront his/her problems calls for the President to deliver this lecture with the hope that all will see the light and embrace America as the agent and a partner for change in the region. However, this lecture was needed in the first place because America’s military power failed in achieving the expansionist goals and winning the hearts and minds of the region. Therefore the alternative was soft power, but it is far too late considering all the carnage and death visited upon the region by the US and its main ally Israel in the past twelve years alone. How many Muslim deaths are needed to extract revenge and for how long?

1I would like to thank Juan Cole for including this material on his website which made it easier for me to cite. From: Copies of original letters from the army of General Bonaparte in Egypt, intercepted by the fleet under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson. With an English translation (London, J. Wright, 1798-1800, 3 vols.), vol. 1, pp. 235-237.

2 Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 12