 My friend Ari Roskies made the case on this blog two days ago that President Obama should have criticized oppresive Islamist regimes for requiring women to wear hijabs, or traditional head-coverings, in addition to defending what should be the right of women to do so in western countries. Ari added that by not opposing the hijab’s enforcement, Obama bought into the rhetoric of those who claim that the West is in a war against Islam, thereby “validating the grievances of the very religious extremists he is seeking to marginalize.”
Ari’s argument- with which I disagree- exemplifies the type of rhetoric that has exacerbated antagonism between the West and the Muslim world, the antagonism that Obama is trying to cool. By criticizing prohibitions against hijabs, Obama was not implying that he condoned- much less validated- their enforcement in opressive regimes. Quite the opposite: by calling for freedom of religious expression, Obama was condemning those that coerce others to follow fundamentalist laws.
This issue bears particular relevance for Jews this week, as Yisrael Beiteinu, part of Likud’s ruling coalition in the Israeli government, has performed an about-face by opposing a bill in the Knesset legalizing civil marriage. Avigdor Liberman’s party would thus be endorsing the continued prohibition of marriages that don’t conform to the four “confessions”: Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze. In effect, this means that Jews in Israel can’t get married with Conservative or Reform ceremonies, much less have same-sex or secular marriages.
Imagine if the US government were to outlaw Orthodox Jewish marriage (a hypothetical, I know). The Jewish community here would be up in arms, of course, because it’s our right to get married as we’d like. That right, however- and our defense of it- says nothing about the coercion of Orthodox marriage on all Israeli Jews. In fact, our defense of freedom of religious marriage here would show that we’d support freedom of religious marriage everywhere, including Israel.
But why would Obama, defender of religious freedom, not raise the issue of Islamist regimes forcing hijabs on women? I turn to something that Ari wrote in his post:
…much of the coverage of the response of the “Arab Street†to Obama’s speech has tended to reflect the sentiment that words, unaccompanied by actions, are meaningless.
That’s the point: were Obama to have opposed hijab-coercion in public, his admonition would have fallen on unresponsive ears asnd he would have no way to follow his statement with corresponding action. Moreover, those Islamist regimes that were his audience would have used that criticism as “proof” that Obama is an enemy of Islam, intolerant of its traditions and out to sabotage its leaders. Obama could have said anything he would have liked but as the “Arab Street” posited, words alone mean nothing.
In other words, it isn’t what Obama said but what he does in the future that will determine whether he’s successful in gaining the sympathy of the Muslim world. The speech may have been a strategic victory, but it set a daunting agenda for Obama in terms of his promises to the global Muslim and Arab communities. Adding a statement about the immorality of religious coercion in Islamic theocracies would have done nothing for his cause.
Ari noted, however, in a conversation we had after his post, that Obama also gained nothing by calling for the lifting of hijab bans in the West, and I agree. Not only does Obama have little influence in this area, but that statement risked antagonizing countries like France, where such bans do, unfortunately, exist and where relations with the US remain shaky following the Bush Years.
I trust that Obama opposes both the banning of hijabs and the enforcement of them, as do I. Regardless, he gained no political capital by adressing one of those topics and I’m glad he avoided the other. Religious freedom is a basic human right but let’s focus on where we can make a tangible difference.
As Jews, this means working for civil marriage in Israel. Let’s see what we can do.
