Obama’s Cairo speech has obviously been the most talked about thing this past week. While I have been surveying the many varied praises and critiques out there, I was drawn to a set of responses on one particular aspect of the speech: the section on women’s rights. Fatemeh Fakhraie has shared her thoughtful observations here, mainly in response to other feminists who have found more to diss than to like in the speech.
A complaint by a certain Anne Applebaum caught my attention. She writes, in an otherwise positive take on the speech: “he could have spared us the comment about the ’struggle for womens’ equality in America,’ as if we were all in this together, us and the regimes who stone women for adultery.” This is a very interesting remark, because it objects to precisely one of the reasons why many of us might actually appreciate Obama’s speech, for his intelligent acknowledgment of nuance and complexity when it comes to such an issue. As Fatemeh notes, “Obama took care not to merely point fingers.” By recognizing problems within America while discussing those of “the Muslim world,” he made a very basic ethical gesture, one that I think is often crucial to resolving problems.
Applebaum’s perspective, however, is quite different. For her, the logic of differences between us and them reigns supreme. (more…)
