An Insider to Islamic Reformation

President Obama's speech in Cairo cannot be deemed historic based on his frank criticism of all sides--the West, Israel, and the Arab world at large--as much for Obama's ability to insert himself, quite shrewdly, into a brewing war within the Islamic world, the war that the scholar of Islam Reza Aslan has likened to Islam's Reformation.

In his wonderfully articulate book "No God but God," Aslan argues that the rise of political Islam--and its most radical branch, the Wahabbism--rode the tailwind of the post-colonial movements in the Muslim world. The messages of the extreme wing of political Islam--the unconditional and irrational hatred of the West, rabid anti-Semitism, and an apocalyptic political platform--are directed not so much towards the West, but towards the Islamic world at large, Aslan insists. Thus, the burning towers of the World Trade Center and the gaping hole in the Pentagon building were the ultimate symbols of the Orthodox fundamentalism which seemed to say, again not to the West, but to its fellow Muslims: "See, we are winning, and God is on our side."

The brilliance of Obama is that he understands the intricacies of this internal fight within Islam and is not only not afraid, but relishes, straying into this political and literal minefield. In particular, Obama's ability to insert his own biography as a child of mixed marriage, of two worlds gives him the credibility to not only speak to the Muslims, but be an integral part of the Islamic Reformation! It doesn't really matter that he is a professed Christian as most Muslims seem him as essentially Muslim. In this regard they are not that different from the right-wingers in this country who see our President the same way the only difference being that this perception on the part of the Islamic world is tremendously positive.

Specifically, the most resonant part of his speech was his narration of his biography, his Muslim ancestry, and his memory trip to his childhood in Indonesia when he would wake up to the sounds of ezan. A particularly shrewd move on his part was to pepper his speech with eloquent verses from the Qur'an and his impeccable use of Arabic terms to denote uniquely Arabic experiences (the the hijab, zekat, etc. Criticizing Israel was a sideshow, albeit a significant one, but not necessarily historic. President Barack Husein Obama speaking to the Muslim world, not from the outside, but from the nooks and crannies of that world's own metaphors, dreams, images, and visions, was truly historic and seismic.

The Cairo speech will thus become a part of history for it has certainly tipped the balance in favor of the Reformation within Islam. With a few of those words, President Obama has lifted up women like Wedad Lootah, a 46 year old woman author from the United Arab Emirates who has written a wonderful little sex manual titled "Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples," in which she offers frank advice to women (even guiding them through the ways to discover the ultimate pleasure in life, orgasm!), and informing the Arab men that while anal sex might have been their first sexual experience, due to the Arab world's intense gender segregation, that this should not be the expectation they have of their wives. What is interesting about this remarkable woman is that she wears the burqa and has never revealed her face and uses, get this, the Qur'an(!) to explain her views on sexuality. Needless to say, her work has prompted a fierce reaction from the sexually repressed Wahabbis, although it has achieved the bestseller status among many women. A 52 year old woman, with grandchildren, reported that she finally discovered orgasm: "Imagine, all that time she did not know," Lootah commented matter-of-factly.

President Obama's boost to the Reformation will certainly benefit the hundreds of thousands of Shari'a scholars who have been openly calling for the re-opening of the "gates of ijtihad, or the Shari'a consensus. The Shari'a law, and its all four mainstream schools of thought, is based on the consensus among scholars and jurists that was reached as early as 10th century after which the gates closed. Consequently, there can be no reopening of discussion on how Islam should view things such as homosexuality, adultery, theft, and gender relations. Some of the world's leading Shari'a jurists have been arguing, quite convincingly, that due to the modernity draped face of our world today, the ijtihad had been outlived, the gates have to be re-opened, and a more fluid, flexible, and pragmatic ijtihad established.

Finally, in not using the word "terrorism," or "good vs. evil," a single time, President Obama struck another deadly blow to Wahhabism: refusing to take up their apocalyptic language, he rooted them out of the debate, if only temporarily.

Let us remember that in getting to the point where it is now, modern Europe had to go through the horrors of Thirty Years' War, the Hugenot persecutions, and the brutal Vatican-inspired Crusades with the end result of making religion more meaningful and tolerable.

The Islamic world is engaged in this struggle at the very moment. And the fact that President Obama not only understands this, but can be an insider to this conversation (taking all of us with him), is simply remarkable!