You cannot blame a politician for liking rhetoric, and President Obama’s speech on the Middle East is full of it. His favorite word “change” occurs often, and there are idealistic expressions like “a season of hope.” But what was wrapped up in the sugar coating, and will it be acceptable to the American people and those who value freedom in the world at large? A few observations on those questions:

Throughout the speech, I had a recurrent sense that he was not addressing the U.S. and its people but Muslim opinion in the Middle East and beyond. Some scholars have written about the dhimmi mentality, i.e., a subservient attitude developed towards Muslim rulers by Christian, Jewish, and other communities that were allowed to survive, but under heavy restrictions, in the Muslim world. It has sometimes been held that the West’s response to events in the Muslim world betrays a similar mentality, brought about by fear. Was the president’s speech an example of this?

The president seemed understandably but unduly optimistic about the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death. It will undoubtedly affect some of al-Qaeda’s operations, but extremist Islamism is now so decentralized that it will have little effect, for instance, on the Taliban in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or al-Shabab in Somalia, or even on AQ in the Arabian Peninsula. It would be a great mistake to see bin Laden’s death as the end of radical Islam. It may in fact lead to his becoming an icon or a martyr in exactly the way that the president does not wish.

Has the “Arab Spring” been as non-violent as the president claims? Certainly there are many in the Middle East who want it to be and to remain non-violent. But the Copts whose churches have been burned, whose young people have been killed, and whose women have been abducted will hardly see it that way. The emergence of a Salafism in Egypt, Gaza, and Jordan as a result of the revolutions may turn out to be much more difficult to deal with than even the Wahhabism of AQ. Obama should not be misled into thinking that this is some kind of Gandhian or Martin Luther King–like movement. We should never forget the lessons from Iran in 1979, where many secular, moderate, and non-violent elements joined with Islamists in the struggle to oust the Shah. Once he was toppled, however, the Islamists got rid of their erstwhile allies one by one. Egypt, of course, is not Iran, and we pray that what happened there will not also happen in Egypt, but we need awareness of the parallels.

Obama referred several times to the desire for democracy among the demonstrators, but is this enough? Democracy can lead to a tyranny of the majority, and those who acquire power through the ballot box are not always prepared to give it up in the same way. Unless there is a strong charter of liberty that safeguards the rights of women and non-Muslim communities, democracy on its own may prove chimerical. There needs also to be a commitment to one law for all and to equality under the law. The retention in Egypt of sharia as the sole basis for law cannot be a good omen for the future of such equality. These difficult questions cannot be bypassed by soft-focused references to democracy. Obama mentioned a “fierce contest for power” but did not say that some of those engaged in that contest are ideologically committed not to relinquish such power once they have acquired it.

The president spoke of freedom of religion as one of the universal rights that the U.S. is committed to upholding, but he did not spell out what this means. Instead, worryingly, he echoed the State Department’s recent interpretation of this as meaning only freedom of worship. According to the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, such freedom also means freedom of expression, freedom of belief, the right to change one’s belief, and the right to manifest it publicly. We need a strong affirmation of this interpretation from the United States.

President Obama talked of Iraq’s peaceful “multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian” democracy — talk that, having been there recently, I cannot endorse Iraq remains one of the most violent places on earth. Christians and other minorities, like the Mandaeans and the Yazidis, who do not have private militias and walled districts, are especially exposed to Islamist violence. Much remains to be done to secure peace and security in Iraq.

I welcome the president’s claim that America’s current policy in the region is not to support despotic regimes that deny people their fundamental freedoms, but the rhetoric sounded a little hollow in the absence of any reference in the speech to Saudi Arabia, a country which continues to deny its citizens religious freedom and freedom of movement, and to deny equality of opportunity to women. Apart from Bahrain, there was no reference to any of the Gulf States either.

It was good that the president, in his discussion of Israel–Palestine, referred to the unacceptability of the Hamas-Fatah rapprochement, so long as Hamas continues to deny Israel its right to exist, but there was no acknowledgment of the emergence in Gaza of even more dangerous radical groups, which raises serious questions about the security of Israel and its people. And while Jerusalem was mentioned, no proposals were presented about its future. There can be no settlement that harks back to the pre-1967 situation. Israel’s historic interests, as well as the Palestinians’, have to be recognized, and it may be that some careful “shared sovereignty” solution, along with special arrangements for the holy places, on the basis of the status quo, will be found to be the most realistic option.

It is understood that the president’s remarks may have been made to head off a symbolic recognition of pre-1967-borders Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly and to restart negotiations between the parties. This is indeed commendable, but not at the expense of securing an agreement that is just and workable for both Israel and the Palestinian people. It would be tragic if the emergence of a Palestinian state consigned the Palestinians to Salafi-Wahabi servitude rather than leading to a true freedom for Christians as well as Muslims, women as well as men.

Finally, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, I would have welcomed an acknowledgment from the president of the Biblical basis of the idea, expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that women and men are endowed with certain inalienable rights by their Creator. This is the true basis for any struggle to have human equality affirmed and respected. National Review

— Michael Nazir-Ali, a bishop in the Church of England, is director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy, and Dialogue.