THE US has invited leading critics of the Egyptian regime, including members of parliament from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group, to attend President Barack Obama’s much-awaited speech to the Muslim world in Cairo today.
The audience at Cairo University will include bloggers critical of the Egyptian government, Ayman Nour, the former presidential candidate whose imprisonment had strained relations between Cairo and the previous US administration, as well as independent deputies who belong to the banned Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition group.
The guest list marks an apparent US attempt to balance closer relations with Arab leaders with an outreach to civil society and opposition groups. Mr Obama has carefully refrained from criticising the Egyptian authorities even when pressed on their human rights record. And he arrives in Cairo after lavishing praise on King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during a visit to Riyadh.
“I imagine that the US embassy had something to do with the invitations,” said Saad Al Katatny, the head of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc. “We have a fifth of the seats in parliament, and we are present in society. It is natural that we should be invited; it is ignoring us that is not natural.”
Brotherhood members of parliament are usually not asked to official events in Egypt and they are almost never interviewed on state media. The group is the main target of a government crackdown intended to keep it on the defensive through a revolving-door policy of arrests and releases of its members.
“We welcome Mr Obama and his speech,” said Mr Katatny. “But it is a welcome mixed with caution.” On his arrival in Saudi Arabia yesterday, Mr Obama said he wanted to visit the place where Islam began and discuss “many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East”. He said he had been “struck” by the Saudi monarch’s “wisdom” and “graciousness”.
His trip to the region is an attempt to win the hearts and minds of Muslims after eight years of tensions provoked by the September 11th attacks and the “war on terror”, which was perceived by Muslims as an attack on Islam.
Mr Obama has clearly disconcerted the leaders of al-Qaeda, whose organisation thrived on the deepening anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. In an audio message broadcast on Qatar’s al-Jazeera television, Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, yesterday said the US president had “sown the seeds of hatred and revenge against the US”.
“Certainly there is a pitched battle for hearts and minds,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, an Egyptian political analyst. “It is certain that the image of the US in the Muslim world has started to improve. Even if scepticism rules, more people are willing to give the US a second chance. This is what worries extremists.” – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)