Obama Chooses Egypt From Which to Address the Islamic World
Coming up in several weeks, on Thursday the 4th of June 2009, American president Barack Obama will be making what he intends to be an address of international importance from an undisclosed location in Egypt to the Islamic world. At the time of his election he promised that he would be making such a speech during his first 100 days in office in the effort to extend the hand of friendship to the Muslim world, after years of rising tensions between the West and the Muslim world over war in the Middle East, and ‘September 11’. The date has now slipped into his 2nd 100 days, due to security concerns that have delayed his travel to the region.
In his Egyptian speech Obama will specifically be reaching out to the one fifth of the world population that is Muslim, nearly 2 billion people. Islamic countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Authority are politically currently aligned with the USA while Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda and Qatar are not. Some Muslim countries are not as clear in their alliances, such as Lebanon and Indonesia.
Political commentators in Washington DC believe Obama’s decision to speak from Egypt is a very important indicator of the current power balance in the Middle East. It is hoped that the Egyptian Government will take a central role in convincing the massive Muslim audience across their many cultures and nations, that alignment with the US, and not Iran, is in their best interests. Iran is a radical theocracy following Islamic sharia law, and largely made up of Shiite Muslims, while Egypt is the largest Arab nation, a republic, with the Sunni form of Islam as the state religion, mostly moderate, and generally pro-Western in its outlook. Egypt also has had its own experience of religiously-based terrorism, going back to the 1981 assassination in Cairo of their President Anwar Sadat by radical Muslims within their own military. Egyptian society also produced the Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor to other radical movements of today. The Obama administration is hopeful that Egypt will be influential in working toward peace between Israel and Palestine.
Hosni Mubarak has been the President since the death of Sadat, and now at 81 years of age has been a long time friend of the USA, and a voice for political and religious moderation. He has been a staunch defender of Egypt’s historic peace agreement with Israel known as the Camp David Accords, signed by Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 and witnessed by then President Jimmy Carter. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and resulted in Sadat and Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Egypt’s ongoing support is key to US foreign policy in the Middle East and we await with interest President Obama’s speech.