IT was not an April Fools' joke. When President Barack Obama met the Queen of the Commonwealth at Buckingham Palace, he gave her an iPod. Last week, I was half expecting the president to show up in the Middle East laden with Kindles.
He could have started with a special reading selection when he met Saudi King Abdullah. The day after, when the President spoke to the Muslim world at Al-Azhar University, I pictured him handing out another Kindle to Muhammed Sayyid Tantawy, the university's grand sheik. Obama might have had a third Kindle for the ambassador of Iran to Egypt (for this man represents the ayatollah, who is the highest authority for Shia Muslims), who attended the presidential address.
Unlike the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one. The king of Saudi Arabia; the grand sheik of Al-Azhar University (the largest, and in the eyes of many Muslim scholars, most prestigious Islamic centre of learning); and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran all make equal claims to represent the heart and soul of the umma.
They have their differences. The king is the protector of the holy shrine of Islam and a political leader. The grand sheik has no formal political power, but it is not an exaggeration to say his institution is one of the most influential in the Muslim world. And Iran not only claims spiritual power but pursues political and military dominance. The issue of who speaks for Islam is perhaps the worst nightmare for the US; this is not fully appreciated by the crafters of American foreign policy.
This makes a discussion of the relationship between Islam and the West much more problematic than the president's speechwriters realise.
Like former US presidents, Obama denounced Islamic extremism without once associating Islam with extremism. He firmly stated that America is not at war with Islam and will never be; and he invited the Muslim world to join hands with the US to fight extremism tooth and nail.
However, Islamic extremism can be read in two ways. The first is in its foreign policy implications for the US: that is, in its expansionist or jihadi meaning. Al-Qa'ida-like attacks on American soil against Americans or American interests will be met with force, the President promised. That's an easy position to take because for the US it's a position of self-defence. It is not America that is at war with Islam. It is Islam that is at war with America.
The second sense of the word "extremism," used many times by the President, is as a euphemism for the application of Islamic law, or sharia, in Muslim countries. This the President evidently hopes to counter by wooing the Muslim street.
The courtship articulated in his speech was peppered with false praise ("... it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed ... our mastery of pens and printing."), feigned common principles and made ridiculous promises to fight negative stereotyping of Islam wherever he encounters it.
This is all part of political rhetoric, but it really doesn't lead to concrete change. This, in my view, is the wrong strategy. Instead of pretending that Muslims invented printing, the President should be confronting them with the key products of the Western printing press. And it's here that Kindles could be of use.
I imagined him offering the king, the sheik and the ayatollah each a Kindle with Abraham Lincoln's case against slavery and for equality. Obama reminded the Muslim world that "black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the centre of America's founding."
Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries. No difference is greater between American and Islamic principles than the founding ideals of both. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of Islam that al-Qa'ida and other Muslim puritans insist on the implementation of sharia law, jihad and the eternal subjection of women. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of America that blacks and women fought for -- and gained -- equal rights and gays and new immigrants continue to do so.
I would include Thomas Jefferson's improvements on the New Testament. The king, the sheik and the ayatollah have the authority to rule that parts of the Koran no longer apply in the modern world. For instance, the edicts of sharia law that reject scientific inquiry and order all Muslims to spread Islam.
And of course, no reading selection would be complete without a copy of the US Constitution, highlighting (because you can do that in a Kindle) the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment.
And for good measure, I would also add John F.Kennedy's inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ... To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required. ... To those nations who would make themselves our adversary ... we dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. ... Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Not to mention woman.
Obama promised to launch a fund to support technological development in Muslim majority countries to transfer ideas to the marketplace and create jobs. Does he realise the transfer of ideas creates opportunities for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Saudi Arabia to punish the practice of un-Islamic ideas?
That poor girl in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, who, after seven men raped her, was sentenced to flogging, had succumbed to the novel idea of flirting by mobile phone. In Saudi Arabia, every Friday, cruel and unusual punishment is perpetrated, far worse than anything John Adams saw in his time. The hands of those suspected of stealing -- mostly poor, immigrant workers -- are amputated.
The more one is dark-skinned in Saudi Arabia, the bleaker his circumstances, not to mention hers. For in Saudi Arabia, black is still considered to be inferior. Men and women convicted of adultery, apostasy, treason and other "offences" are beheaded. Thousands of women are rotting in Saudi jails, waiting to be flogged, or are flogged daily for acts such as mingling with men, improper attire, fornication and virtual relationships on the internet and mobile phones.
Promotion of literacy for girls, which the President wants to help pursue, is a noble cause. But, unless sharia laws are repealed, more girls will find themselves in flogging pens rather than rising up the career ladder.
Obama promised to host a summit of entrepreneurship in Muslim majority countries "to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the US and Muslim countries around the world."
I wish he would host a reading summit where we truly "say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts that too often are said only behind closed doors". For too many of us born into Islam, saying those things openly can land us in jail or in the graveyard.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Dutch parliamentarian and author of the memoir Infidel.
