The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis. This crisis, however, may give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics. To do so, we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism.

Under the banner of "Arab nationalism," we have had many moments of bravery, unity, and triumph. Arab nationalism ended colonialism and forged connections among emerging states, making an indelible mark on the history. This nationalism was not perfect, but it was crucial in our struggles for self-determination, and provided a unifying vision--a project for a future beyond sectarian or even national interests. It is a vision that we need more than ever today. 

This vision is still alive among the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. We can see it, for example, in the constant demonstrations of support for the Palestinian cause. It also underlies the appeal of various forms of fundamentalism.  As much as they discomfit the West and secular Arabs, these currents embody precisely that yearning for a unified community. The umma may have replaced the Arab nation, and Islamism may have taken up the banner of resistance from Arab nationalism for many Muslims, but forms of Islamism have always been with us, and nationalist and Islamic currents have always been intertwined

Arab nationalism itself aimed to be a pan-Arab "supra-nationalism." Even while fighting for national independence, it maintained a vision of the transnational community and a respect for the shared Islamic character of peoples and cultures. The secular nationalist Michel Aflaq saw the strong connections between Islam and Arab nationalism, and prophesized that "A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only defenders of Islam.

Thus, Arab nationalism always shared a number of themes with Islamist movements:  the search for a unified collective consciousness, the desire for a renaissance of Arab language and culture and, of course, anti-imperialism. Resurgent political Islamism, in turn, has absorbed many positions and lessons from its secular nationalist cousin.  

It has become commonplace to remark how Islamism has taken up the banner of resistance to Western domination, and of cultural and even national independence.  For decades, however, it was the West and "moderate" Arab governments which sought to exploit the conservative Islamist currents against the radical nationalists. Our "dirty little secret" - Islamists and secular nationalists included - is that no one has been immune to the opportunistic lure of complicity with foreign powers bent on regional hegemony for their own purposes. We must get past this deadly mutual instrumentalism. It has corrupted great nationalist movements and turned Islam into a doctrine of division and - at the extremes -- armed fanaticism. 

The attempt to set the Arab world against Iran is the latest instance of this futile strategy.  A generalized Sunni-Shiite conflict would destroy pan-Islamism as surely as national selfishness destroyed pan-Arabism. Regimes and populations have resisted this strategy. Arabs states have insisted that concerns about Iran be addressed in the context of the region as a whole.  During the latest Gaza crisis, populations throughout the Arab world kept in check the opportunistic tendencies of certain regimes, and expressed trans-confessional solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. At moments like these, we see that the spirit of pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamic solidarity lives.

A revival of this spirit will not come from governments, but from the region-wide popular movements that form in the abyss between regimes and people. A revival of this spirit will not come from governments, but from the region-wide popular movements that form in the abyss between regimes and people. There, we see the yearning for a new form of "nationalism without a nation" that can provide justice, unity and true independence throughout the Arab world. Islamic movements are not the true fulfillment of the nationalist promise, but they have infused it with a renewed spirit of resistance and collective energy. If the self-perpetuating authoritarian regimes, built by nationalist parties, helped to bury Arab nationalism, the new resistance movements, often led by Islamists, are helping to revive it.

A new form of pan-nationalism is arising - generally secular, while still assertive of Arab and Islamic identity, and proud of being involved with the other cultures and languages of the world. This form of consciousness is embedded in new means of international communication, in new networks that have been created among the diaspora and indigenous communities, and in new, creative and profane uses of culture and language that have developed. It detests authoritarianism and corruption, and yearns for democracy and the rule of law, while firmly rejecting foreign military intervention and refusing Western condescension. Where traditional nationalism and Islamism want to be restrictive and controlling, it wants to be capacious and daring, opening our imaginations to new cultural and social possibilities.

This incipient form of transantionalist, pan-Arab consciousness still lacks political effectiveness. It gets squeezed between politically adept forces that speak for state authority or preach sharia. Societies remain divided between an ossified "patriotic" nationalism (wataniya) and a powerful but politically amorphous yearning for transnational solidarity (qawniya). The result is a kind of three-way divorce à l'italienne, with the three parties - the state and its clients, secular and progressive constituencies, and Islamic currents - living uncomfortably separate lives under the same national roof. 

The present economic crisis may provide new opportunities for those with a secular and democratic perspective to shape the debate. In the face of worsening social conditions, Islamists do not have a particularly attractive economic agenda. Their substitute, sharia, has some popular appeal as a means of reducing crime and corruption, but their notion of social justice is caritative, not political; it seeks to alleviate the plight of the poor through alms, rather than to reduce poverty through structural change. 

Thus, it was independent activists who mobilized thousands of Egyptians against the reversal of popular Nasserite land reforms, and organized strikes and demonstrations in the Nile delta during the spring of 2008, while Islamists either hesitated or fully adopted the defense of state policies. Islamists are generally uncomfortable with these kinds of movements, which engender a discourse of popular empowerment that slips beyond their control. As these movements spread, they will offer progressive forces new opportunities to shape the agenda with a discourse of justice based on social rights.

We must be wary of false optimism, however. These mobilizations remain rare, and regimes use every tool to prevent such social movements from coalescing with each other or, especially, with Islamist movements. Regimes have become adept at co-opting discourses of cultural or national identity, defending putatively Islamic values against demands for social and human rights, characterized as Western intrusions. This helps to reproduce the division between Islamists and progressives, pushing the latter into a culturalist "identity trap."

Of course, we cannot ignore the fundamental disparity between progressive and Islamist perspectives. On a theoretical level, these two notions are irreconcilable. Still, there will be significant opportunities for alliances that can be tactically advantageous to both currents and substantively important to the people of our region. And the principles that will enable effective, unified action will be the same principles that motivated our historic nationalist movements: a passion for national and regional independence, a commitment to regional cooperation, an insistence on equal and consistent treatment in international affairs. Across ethnic and confessional groups, the people of the region share a vision of a polity that provides political freedom and the rule of law for all citizens, while improving the economic and social lives of our populations. Whether they call themselves secular or Islamist, the most successful movements in our region will be the ones which can most credibly claim to advance these principles.

We do not wish to underestimate the difficulties we face. Neither nationalism nor Islamism is necessarily about democracy. It is understandable, given the arrogant and hypocritical foreign discourses in which they are embedded, that many of our people view the concepts of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law with suspicion. The interventions of the West create a lot of trouble, but also introduce new strategies and ideas - ideas that we can use to create new openings for ourselves. We can see how, in places like Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, the promotion of "democracy" has, however unintentionally, opened new possibilities that have been exploited by local forces to strengthen their credibility and independence.

We must use all opportunities to reawaken the progressive spirit of nationalism, to transform the best of our past into something real and new, creating spaces of unity, democracy and pluralism. We must use all opportunities to reawaken the progressive spirit of nationalism, to transform the best of our past into something real and new, creating spaces of unity, democracy, and pluralism. In doing that, we cannot afford to ignore any of the lessons of our history, or of the rest of the world. We must insist on incorporating the new and powerful lessons of the last 60 years. To paraphrase Michel Aflaq again, democracy, political and intellectual freedom, a respect for human rights, and the rule of law are, we find, the only effective defenders of nationalism and Islam. The day has come.

First, it opened daylight between the US and Israel. Israeli settlements on the West Bank are impediments to a two-state solution and a stable peace with Palestine. Obama did not split hairs. He did not distinguish between increments to existing settler populations by birth versus immigration with or without adding a room to an existing house. The United States, he said, does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. Period.

The American Israel Political Affairs Committee, which advertises itself as America’s pro-Israel lobby, cannot have been pleased to hear that sentence. But without some semblance of independence from Israel, the US cannot be a credible broker between the two sides. It is not necessary to treat the actions of Israeli and Palestinian protagonists as morally equivalent in order to understand that they share responsibility for decades of deadlock. New settlements and the expansion of existing ones merely feed Palestinian suspicions that Israel intends permanently to occupy the West Bank. Nor did Obama’s criticism of Israeli settlements prevent him from also stating: Palestinians must abandon violence. Period.

Second, alongside his candor, he showed respect. The most effective discourse on controversial topics involving Islam and Muslims is both sensitive to feelings and frank about facts, as I argue in a forthcoming book (Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam). Inter-faith dialogues that rely on mutual self-censorship–an agreed refusal to raise divisive topics or speak hard truths – resemble sand castles. Empathy based on denial is unlikely to survive the next incoming tide of reality. Respect without candor, in my view, is closer to fawning than to friendship.

As Obama put it in Cairo, ‘In order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. As the Holy Quran tells us, ‘Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” His listeners applauded – most of them, perhaps, because he had cited their preferred Book, but some at least because he had defended accuracy regardless of what this or that Book might avow.

In the partnership that Obama offered his audience, sources of tensions were not to be ignored. On the contrary, we must face these tensions squarely. He then followed his own advice by noting that extremists acting in the name of Islam had in fact killed more adherents of their own religion than they had Christians, Jews, or the followers of any other faith. In the same candid vein, he noted with disapproval the propensity of some Muslims to repeat vile stereotypes about Jews, the opposition of Muslim extremists to educating women, and the fact of discrimination against Christian Copts in Egypt, the very country in which he spoke.

Third, his speech was notable for what it did not contain. The word ‘terrorism’,’ a fixture of the Manichean rhetoric of George W. Bush, did not occur once. Back in Washington, in his 26 January televised interview with Al Arabiya, Obama had used the phrase Muslim world 11 times in 44 minutes – an average of once every four minutes. In the run-up to his Cairo speech, the White House had repeatedly hyped it as an address to ‘the Muslim world.’ Yet in the 55 minutes it took him to deliver the oration, the words ‘Muslim world’ were never spoken. He must have been advised to delete the reference from an earlier draft of his text.

I believe the excision strengthened the result, but not because a ‘Muslim world’ does not exist. Admittedly, one can argue that 1.4 billion Muslims have too little in common to justify speaking of such a world at all. But the already vast and implicitly varied compass of any ‘world’ diminishes the risk of homogenization. One can easily refer to ‘the Muslim world’ while stressing its diversity. Many Muslims and non-Muslims already use the phrase without stereotyping its members. No, the reasons why Obama avoided the phrase were less definitional than they were political in nature.

Had Obama explicitly addressed the Muslim world in Cairo, he would have risked implying that his host represented that Muslim world, as if Egypt were especially authentic–quintessentially Muslim–in that sphere. That would have been poorly received in many of the other Muslim-majority societies that diversely span the planet from Morocco to Mindanao.

Several years ago a professor from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, which co-sponsored Obama’s appearance, told me in all seriousness that Indonesian Muslims, because they did not speak Arabic, were not Muslims at all. Obama did not wish to be read by the followers of ostensibly universalist Islam as endorsing such a parochially Arabo-centric conceit.

The US president could, of course, have mentioned the Muslim world and in the next breath denied that it was represented by Egypt, a country under an authoritarian regime with a reputation for corruption of near-Nigerian proportions. But it was far smarter and more effective for Obama to have shunned the phrase altogether, thereby avoiding the need to clarify it and risk implying that his hosts were somehow less than central to Islam, less than paradigmatically Muslim. Such a candid but insensitive move would have triggered nationalist and Islamist anger not only in his Egyptian audience, but in other Muslim-majority countries as well. Indonesian Muslims, for example, would have wondered with some apprehension whether to expect comparably rude behavior were he to visit their own country later this year.

Obama’s listeners at Cairo University were, instead, subjected to twin eloquences of absence and silence: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s not being present, and Obama’s not mentioning him at all. Eloquent, too, was the absence of Israel from his itinerary. This omission was not a sign of hostility toward Tel Aviv, however. He termed the US-Israel bond ‘unbreakable.’ Not visiting Israel merely signaled that Washington on his watch would not limit its foreign-policy horizon to what any one country would allow.

Obama mispronounced the Arabic term for the head covering worn by some Muslim women. The word is hijab not hajib. But that small slip was trivial compared with the brilliance and timeliness of what he had to say. Rhetoric is one thing, of course; realities are quite another. The tasks of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum and improving relations with the heterogeneous Muslim world are more easily discussed than done. Illustrating that Muslim world’s extraordinary diversity are the many and marked differences between Turkey, where Obama spoke on 6 April on his first overseas trip, his Egyptian venue two months later, and Indonesia, which he is likely to visit before the end of 2009.

Before his choice of Cairo was announced, several commentators advised him to give his Muslim world speech in June in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Rather than risk legitimating Mubarak’s autocracy, they argued, he should celebrate Indonesia’s success in combining moderate Islam with liberal democracy.

Following their advice would have been a mistake. Not only did speaking in Cairo enable Obama boldly to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a podium close to its Middle Eastern epicenter. Had he traveled to Indonesia instead, his visit would have been tainted by an appearance of American intervention in the domestic politics of that country, whose President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is up for re-election on 8 July.

Earlier in his career, Yudhoyono completed military training programs in the US, at Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, and earned a master’s in management from Webster University in St. Louis. No previous Indonesian head of state has had a closer prior association with the United States. Yudhoyono’s rivals for the presidency are already berating him and his running mate as neo-liberals who have pawned Indonesia’s economy to the capitalist West. Obama could feel comfortable keeping the autocrat Mubarak at arm’s length in Cairo, but in campaign-season Indonesia the US president would have been torn between behaving ungraciously toward his democratically chosen host and appearing to back him in his race for re-election.

Yudhoyono’s popularity ratings among Indonesians are even better than Obama’s are among Americans. The July election is Yudhoyono’s to lose. But the winner’s new government will not be in place until October. The US president was wise to postpone visiting Indonesia until after its electoral dust has cleared and the next administration in Jakarta has taken shape. A gathering of leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which Obama is expected to attend, is conveniently scheduled for mid-November in Singapore. He could easily visit Indonesia en route to or from that event.

An Indonesian journalist in Cairo interviewed Obama shortly after his speech. The president virtually confirmed this November itinerary by saying that his next trip to Asia would include Indonesia. He said he looked forward to revisiting the neighborhood in Jakarta where he had lived as a child, and to eating again his favorite Indonesian foods – fried rice, bakso soup, and rambutan fruit among them.

A trifecta happens when a gambler correctly predicts the first three finishers of a race in the correct order. Obama appears to have bet his skills in public diplomacy on this sequence: Ankara first, then Cairo, then Jakarta.

One can ask whether his actions will match his words, and whether the US Congress will go along with his prescriptions. But with two destinations down and one to go, Obama is well on his way to completing a trifecta in the race for hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

A version of this essay appeared in AsiaTimes Online on 6 June 2009.