How Trump Got Comfortable With Saudi Religious Extremism
By Ed Kilgore
May 22, 2017
1:19 pm
When we learned Donald Trump was going to give a “major speech” on Islam in Saudi Arabia—penned by career Islamophobe Stephen Miller, no less—there were reasons to fear the president might cause a major international scandal, either by insulting his hosts or by perpetuating the American habit of explaining other people’s religions to them.
Now that Trump has delivered his speech, the latter concern remains. But as it turns out his hosts were probably delighted by his words (much as they might snicker at its presumptuousness), since Trump’s whole take was to identify with the Saudi regime’s belief that it perfectly represents “true” Islam, as opposed to, well, the entire Shia tradition, and those unruly Sunni insurgencies that threaten the stability Riyadh most values.
As Peter Beinart noted, Trump’s speech fell well short of Obama’s famous and much-derided (especially by Trump) 2009 Cairo address when it came to speaking truth to power:
"Trump criticized terrorist groups like ISIS for their “persecution of Jews,” and he condemned Iran for pledging “the destruction of Israel.” But since ISIS and Iran are Riyadh’s most bitter foes, those condemnations won’t have bothered the Saudi monarchs at all. Unlike Obama, Trump avoided the broader problem of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Islamic countries, a problem in which his Saudi hosts are deeply complicit. Nor did he even hint at the fact that Saudi Arabia still does not recognize Israel.
"On the question of women’s rights, it was much the same. Trump attacked jihadist terrorists for “the oppression of women.” But he described King Salman’s government as a virtual beacon of women’s rights. “Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development,” Trump declared. You would never have known that women in the Kingdom still can’t drive."
Beinart attributes this kowtowing to the Saudis to Trump’s chronic inability to repeat nasty things he has said about people to their face. “Trump is a coward,” he says. But there is a another, less psychological explanation: that Trump’s speech represents an accommodation of his domestic political attacks on “radical Islamic terrorism” to a foreign policy focused on opposing Iran and ISIS at every turn.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/how-trump-got-comfortable-with-saudi-religious-extremism.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
