Obama, Francis of Assisi and Egypt
I’ve spent the past few years working on a book (due out in September) about Francis of Assisi’s encounter with the sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, during the Fifth Crusade in 1219. So I’ve followed President Obama’s speech in Cairo in that context.
The research took me to Egypt, where I found both great hospitality and – most people I met worked their way over to this, however graciously – much hostility over the war in Iraq and the president who, as one Egyptian bishop complained, had been so foolish as to call it a “crusade.”
Obama faced much anger – but certainly not more so than Francis, who visited the sultan during a battle in which the Crusaders, having turned down a peace treaty that would have given them Jerusalem, were laying siege to the city of Damietta at the mouth of the Nile, slowly killing nearly all its 80,000 residents. Sultan al-Kamil, probably the most Christian-friendly of any Egyptian sultan, received Francis gently and allowed him to preach.
Francis came away with some revolutionary insights into how Christians could relate to Muslims. Even as the Crusade continued on toward its disastrous conclusion, he proposed that his friars live peacefully among Muslims and “be subject” to them. The tragedy is that Francis, ill and marginalized within his order during the last years of his life, was never able to convince others to join him in seeing Muslims in a new light. The example he tried to show his fellow Christians by going to the enemy unarmed wasn’t heeded at the time.
The response of Americans to Obama’s journey to Egypt is just as important as the reaction the president draws in the Middle East. The text of his speech shows that his remarks were addressed to Muslims. But the simple example of going to Cairo to speak to the Muslim world speaks volumes to Americans. It calls for a new way of relating to the Muslim world – that the default position shouldn’t be suspicion.
Obama was not just speaking to Muslims today. Much of the value of his journey will lay in whether it helps to change the attitudes of his own people.
Update: The Vatican newspaper and Vatican Radio praised Obama’s speech, according to CNS. L’Osservatore Romano said that the speech “went beyond political formulas, evoking concrete common interests in the name of a common humanity.”
Photos: Above, “Francis and the Sultan,” Arnaldo Zocchi, 1909. St. Joseph’s Church, Cairo. Below, Islamic Cairo, the city’s medieval section.
Mr. Moses – thanks for posting and look forward to reading your book. Appreciate your points that tie one event in catholic/human history to current events today:
- begin by reaching out; open hand v. clenched fist
- go forward with humility; stand in the other’s shoes – difficult but better than American military triumphalism
- especially note your final point – the speech is directed as much to us, Americans, as to the Islamic world.
Thanks
I thought Obama’s speech was exactly on target.
Interesting post. We Christians/Catholics can be such jackasses at times. Blessed are the peacemakers, among whom would have to be our president. What a breath of fresh air!
So this is the man that should not have been given a degree from Notre Dame. Francis and Obama. Poor Francis. Even his own Friars betrayed him. And Francis had little luck reforming the bishops and pope who used him for their own ends.
I usually do not sit through an Obama Speech. Even for a small part. I watched all of this on CNN replay. There is so much in it by a truly remarkable man.
I mean he spared no one. I loved his reference to all the children of Abraham and hoped that they could live in peace. In truth the Children of Abraham whether they follow Moses, Jesus or Mohammed have done a poor job, particularly their leaders, have been a warring group.
Even Pascal had to correct the hierarchy’s distortion of the gospel when the bishops exalted wealth and played down loving God and neighbor.
Nice correction of countries like France, now quite secularist, for forbidding headdress on women. To people in the US who demonize Muslims while they are hardly without sin.
It was a speech of leadership and truly shows how he dwarfs people like Limbaugh, O’reilly, Chaney and even Ted Kennedy.
John Allen’s take at NCr is about the congruence of obama with BXVI in trying to set the stage for better Western and Muslim relations.
I’m sure we’ll continue to see the usual ideological parsing after the fact, but i found it a terrific effort in the face of enormous problems and divisions.
This morning, on our walk, several of us talked about how Obama was really trying to be the uniter we’d wanted, but whom lots of leaders both political and religious “don’t get.”
Obama’s speech was right on and thank you for bringing some history to the situation. The choosing of Cairo has more meaning now, and I wonder if Obama had any idea of St Francis. Anyhow, the common sense approach of Obama cannot fail to reach many Muslim people as well as our own. But it always strikes me how pundits can extract so much negative from what refreshingly was a positive speech–one that his predecessors would have had a hard time conceiving of!
After 9/11, it was my impression there was a lot of outreach and an attempt to understand the world of Islam, both nationally and here in the Northern California area. Once the drumbeat for war with Iraq began, all those generous impulses gave way to jingoism and demonization.
I must add that on CNN’s Campbel Brown on Satrurday night, Bill Bennett said he thought the speech was”tedious” and that it was a speech GWB could hav egiven.
This shows how far from any kind of objectivity we are in the slash and burn ideology politics and why it’s so hard to get folks to move ahead in any united way on critical political questions.