An Eid al’Fitr Letter to Barack Obama

F. Mohamed: Letter to Obama

Dear Barack,

Qula senna wa inta tayeb! I hope this finds you enjoying the festivities of the day. You have publicly and repeatedly denied that you are Muslim, I know, but I count myself among the many who still think that you might just be of the Islamic persuasion. This is not an expression of fear on my part but what you might call an audacious hope. In my head I know that you are not a “Muslim socialist.” But when I hear you so described my heart races with the glimpse of a glorious possibility. It is too satisfying an idea to abandon and so I refuse to do so, especially on al’Eid, the last day of Ramadan. A beer-drinking apostate Muslim like me—well, that’s just really much too good a prospect to let go of.

Hey, listen, I don’t like walking around and advertising the big “M,” either. If you’re a taxi driver in New York it might even get you stabbed in the neck by a volunteer for Intersections International—surely a new twist on interfaith dialogue. If there was ever a time not to say you’re Muslim, this is it. And I say that having lived through the fear and confusion that followed September 11, 2001. How remarkable it seems now to remember George W. Bush’s address from the Islamic Center in Washington six days after the attacks: “Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent war.” The magnificent speeches of Caesar, Cicero once remarked, are like nude figures stripped of fustian. One longs now for a conservative leader with Bush’s schoolboyish sense of playground fairness.

What we have instead is a tribe of opportunists trying to outdo one another in bigoted rancor. Newt Gingrich seems to think that anyone who eats a falafel sandwich is a radical Islamist frustrating the Second Coming, a view that Sarah Palin would hardly refudiate. John Shadegg did not need to truck out baby Maddy to make the point that the Council of American Islamic Relations is a terrorist front seeking to infiltrate Congress, though he did bring Paul Brown, Trent Franks, and Sue Myrick along for the ride. Lou Ann Zelenik, a Republican candidate for Congress in Tennessee, referred to a mosque in Murfreesboro as an “Islamic training center.” Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee Ron Ramsey brought the point home by declaring that laws on freedom of religion do not apply to Muslims because they are a “cult.” The party that cries most about freedom of religion clearly has the free expression of only one religion in mind, proving yet again that the phrase “Republican hypocrisy” is a tautology.

To be frank, I feel partly responsible for all this, though it’s also your fault, Barack. Bush’s moments of Islamophilia were a crafty bit of policy: a kind word or two in a moment of crisis might win a few votes for the party. You killed that Republican aspiration. You’re the best thing Islam’s got going right now. It’s precisely because some people think that there is a possibility that you might harbor some Muslim sympathies that people like me are completely loyal to you. Perhaps when 90 percent of the Muslim community voted for you it made the message all too clear. In their flawless cynicism, Republicans know this, have cut their losses, and will do their best to inflame fear and hatred of a religious minority that will never vote for them so long as you’re around.

There’s only one real solution to this: convert to Islam. It only takes a moment. You just say a few words—la ilaha illallah, Muhammadur rasulallah—and that’s it! In fact if you just read that last sentence, you might already be a Muslim. You may presently feel an overwhelming urge to vote for yourself in 2012. Now that you have officially converted you can join me in ignoring most of the laws of the faith—and hold onto your prayer cap, my friend, because there are a lot of them. People will see that you are just as charming and capable as ever, your smile just as infectious and your jokes just as disarmingly mediocre, and maybe, just maybe, even the dumbest non-Muslim will think twice about urinating on the floor of his local mosque in the midst of evening prayers.

Or at the very least you might reflect on your response to the proposed, though now suspended, public burning of the Qur’an in Florida. Yes, one can object to this stunt on the grounds that it will endanger American troops or that it would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al’Qaeda. But that reaction participates in the logic of Know-Nothing patriotism. Slightly, and only slightly, better is your appeal to such foundational American values as religious tolerance. As a convert, you might now feel more keenly a dissonance between yourself and the caricature of blind, hotheaded extremism currently evoked by the word “Muslim.” You might be moved more directly and courageously to attack the demonizing of Islam that has become all the rage among blind, hotheaded Christian extremists.

That is what I would expect of the the Barack Obama who was elected in 2008 and who won the Nobel Peace Prize. And it is what I would expect of the Barack Obama who spoke in Cairo in the summer of 2009. At the time of your visit my mother worked in Cairo and told me how its usually teeming sidewalks stood still to hear you speak. Many responded with skepticism, to be sure, but there was also a good deal of optimism. “I love this man,” my mother told me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any member of my family say that about a U.S. president. That is a power to inspire that your enemies can only envy as they grub in their own filth.

Eid mubarak,
Feisal G. Mohamed

Feisal G. Mohamed is an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois. His most recent book, Milton and the Post-Secular Present, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

Homepage image: Obama at Cairo University (Chuck Kennedy/Wikimedia Commons/2009)