Reclaiming History Posted by Patrick Barry

A speech as ambitious in scope and detail as Obama's Cairo address lends itself to all kinds of interpretations, but one aspect which particularly struck me was his reference to the historical contributions of Muslims and Islam to the world.  Here's the relevant passage:

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam - at places like Al-Azhar University - that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

It would be easy to write off the stuff about algebra and medicine as just something politicians do, similar to Gordon Brown lavishing praise on the U.S. when he visited a few months ago.  But to leave it there would be to ignore something much more significant that I think the President was trying to accomplish in the speech, and that is to reclaim a certain way of interpreting history. 

A common and aggravating aspect of certain popular discourses about Islam is the tendency among some commentators to selectively interpret the past in order to argue that Islam and the West are culturally, historically, even geographically determined to clash.  Huntington's 'clashing civilizations' - which pits Western Society against Muslim Society - is probably the most well known contribution to this logic of determined conflict, but it's by no means the only one.  In last month's issue of Foreign Policy, Robert Kaplan brought the same approach to bear in explaining the concept of "shatter zones," a geographic designation, comprised of features that predispose certain parts of the world (including virtually all of the Muslim world) toward instability and conflict.

It would be bad enough if this phenomenon was confined solely to academia or commentary. But it exists in the policy world as well.  No matter how often the Bush administration (the most recent example, but not the only one) claimed they weren't fundamentally at odds with Muslims or Islam, their rhetoric and actions left the impression that they saw mostly intractable differences that could only be reconciled through sudden, dramatic action.  Hence the emphasis on regime change, popular uprisings, and forced elections, the results of which have not been so good.

So how does Obama's speech break with this tendency? By linking the past accomplishments of the Muslim world to the scientific and intellectual revolutions of the west, the President offers an alternative to the insights of Huntington and Kaplan.  According to the President's formulation, history is not solely the product of irreconcilable forces pitted against one another.  It's just as much the result of blending and borrowing.  Our achievements in math and science are in part owed to Ottoman scholars working 600 years ago, who preserved and advanced knowledge, which they passed on to Venetian merchants, who passed them on to someone else.  Not just the clash of ideas, but the exchange of them.

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The problem with "blending" is that many Muslim countries are dependent on years and years of tradition. Many leaders throughout the Muslim world are not interested in borrowing the US views on human rights. How do we place ourselves as peaceful friends, allies, next to countries that torment citizens or deny them freedom? According to the Spiegel Online International, "history will be determined by the mullahs in Tehran and the hardliners in Israel." http://www.newsy.com/videos/obama_s_balancing_act Where does that put the US? How do we stop helping the Israelites to play middle man?

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