Participants in the roundtable gave Pres. Obama’s Cairo speech mixed reviews, praising it for trying to improve relations with the Muslim world but calling it “a conversation more than a commitment” (Mark T. Kimmitt), aspirational but lacking any promises to act, and criticizing its cultural equivalence between Islam and the West.

To read the comments click here

Some highlights are given below:

Josef Joffe called Obama’s approach “Esalen-amidst-the-Pyramids,” that is, it denies real conflicts of interest and sees only “misunderstandings, fears, and neuroses.” Joffe also warned that attempts to pressure Israel will do “a lot of damage” to its one true ally in the region “without reaping any geopolitical fruit from its courtship of Araby.”

Martin Kramer characterized the speech as one of “overbearing hubris” reminiscent of Napoleon’s 1798 speech to the Egyptians, in which the French Emperor spoke of his respect for “God, His Prophet, and the Quran.” He noted third world influences on Obama in the ideas that “Muslims are victims of our colonialism,” “the primacy of the West is over,” and the “implicit comparison of the Palestinians to black Americans during segregation.” Kramer also is troubled that “there is no appreciation of Israel as a strategic asset” and that “its ties to the United States are [seen as] ‘cultural and historical,’ and thus not entirely rational.”

Finally, SPME Board of Directors Member Philip Carl Salzman found that the speech whitewashed the history of Islam. He noted the President’s “good intentions” but wonders whether they will truly “pave the path to progress.”