At the same time, it’s a testament to how effective the right was at smearing Obama as a clandestine Muslim who planned to replace the Constitution with Islamic law and recruit your children to al-Qaeda. Each Muslim nominee for an administration position receives a level of background-dependent scrutiny from conservative fever swamps that no one of any other background receives. That has the compounding effect of disinclining the administration to seek out qualified Muslims for important roles.

It also has a policy effect. Recall this line from Obama’s speech in Cairo last June about resetting U.S.-Muslim world relations:

[I]n the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

Still waiting on that one. The most the administration can say on that front so far is Attorney General Eric Holder has said he’s unsure whether to appeal a decision by a federal judge that the government illegally wiretapped the extremist-linked al-Haramain charity.

This is what a smear is designed to do: raise the political stakes for straying beyond the restricted boundaries of a policy discussion. It’s fear-mongering, pure and simple. And it’s working.

President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 failed to advance the promotion of human rights in the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said today. In a much-anticipated address, Obama spoke bluntly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but kept to generalities when it came to the pressing need for human rights and democratic reforms in the region.

“If Obama wanted to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the US, he should have taken on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed, including his hosts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt and others will interpret his bland generalities as a signal they have nothing to fear from their friends in Washington.”

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama addressed democracy as a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world. His choice of Cairo for this much-anticipated speech was controversial because of Egypt’s record of stifling the opposition, holding tainted elections, and imprisoning dissidents.

Only by 8:09 p.m., the group appeared to soft-peddle that message in a release entitled “Obama Mid-East Speech Supports Rights, Democracy: But U.S. Message Needs Stronger Message for Repressive Regional Allies”:

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world avoided confronting authoritarian governments directly, but sent a welcome message that Washington would not let the prospect of empowering Islamist parties deter it from supporting democracy in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama said the issue of democracy and human rights was a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world, in part because of the Bush administration’s use of democratic rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq. He pledged, however, that the United States would continue to support human rights and democratic principles in the region.

“For the US to regain credibility, it will have to follow through even when voters in the Middle East elect governments Washington doesn’t like,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If Obama wants to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the United States, he should take on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed – including his hosts.”

Whitson’s comments, at least, are consistent between the two releases.

On expanding the debate, the fact that the speech occurred in Cairo is a fairly strong indicator that Obama is dissatisfied with conventional framings, but beyond that, he portrayed “violent extremism” as a problem afflicting global Muslim communities rather than primarily a threat to the west — which, of course, it is. This is a point that President Bush made as well, on occasion and to his credit, but Obama elevated it, especially when he called on Muslims to address “the divisions between Sunni and Shia [that] have led to tragic violence.” It’s a canny way of expressing common purpose based on shared interests.

But the whole speech reflected a belief in dignity promotion. The section of his speech that focused on women’s rights connected the issue to a broader narrative about development, and gave a judicious rejection of Western confusion over the connection between women’s autonomy and religious tolerance:

I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Similarly, he framed his discussion of democracy promotion in a way that challenged today’s dissidents not to be tomorrow’s demagogues:

There are some who advocate for democracy only when they’re out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. So no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

That is one heady statement, and while it may be too far afield for the comfort of those rotting in Egyptian prisons, it expressed a sentiment that establishes a firmer basis for U.S. cooperation with those dissidents.

There was a bit of laundry-listing of specific programs and efforts for development — science envoys, polio eradication, business partnerships, moving beyond the rentier-state dependence in the Middle East on oil and gas revenues — but the effort went to show that the administration has something to offer the Muslim world other than good will and rhetoric. Obama acknowledged that he’ll have to do much more than give a speech in order to bridge the divide between the U.S. and Muslim communities. But as a statement of intent, it’s impressive to see the maturation of an Obama doctrine.

I happened to be in Dearborn, Mich., the oldest Arab-American community in the U.S., working on a story shortly after Bush gave that statement, and practically every Muslim I spoke with brought it up — usually unprompted — to discuss, with great anguish, how it implicitly drove a wedge between their Islamic and American identities. Such alienation — in the name of fighting terrorism! — was not merely at odds with American values, it irresponsibly invited millions of Muslims living as productive American citizens to turn their backs on their country. It didn’t treat U.S. Muslims as an at-risk population that needed protection from extremists; it treated them as potential targets of government harassment, presuming their unproven guilt. David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency scholar-practitioner, has written an eloquent book about the consequences of such a mistake.

President Obama delivers his speech in Cairo (White House photo)

In Cairo today, Obama sought to fix that mistake, singling out the polyglot, internally diverse American Muslim communities as an exhibit in his broader narrative of U.S.-Islamic harmony. And in doing so, he called out the anti-Islamic bigots in America. Al-Qaeda’s provocations “led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights,” he said. “So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity.” He might have been talking about the Fox News primetime lineup. Glenn Beck, of course, is nowhere near as dangerous or as virulent as Osama bin Laden, but for the U.S. to act as if it’s blameless in the post-9/11 divisions between the U.S. and the Islamic world is irresponsible and counterproductive.

Something that’s going to go undernoticed in the speech is that Obama indicated he’ll relax Bush-era restrictions on Muslim charitable giving:

Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

A lot of work is going to need to go into establishing what exactly Obama means here. Some U.S. Muslim charities have been convicted of funneling money to terrorist organizations, primarily against Israel. Some of the cases, however, have apparently been created on the basis of illegal surveillance, as lawyers for the Al-Haramain charity contest. The issue, however, speaks directly to whether the government will compel American Muslims to choose between different aspects of their identity or embrace them as American citizens.

Obama has given his answer, telling the Muslim world that it shares with the U.S. a tradition of “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” It was fitting, then, for Obama to reference Ellison — and implicitly rebuke Ellison’s detractors — in a brief passage:

When the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library.

Ellison’s oath-swearing was the subject of a brief but intense right-wing fury. Obama’s speech sought to put an end to the whole ugly era in which the election of a Muslim to high office is viewed as anything other than a testament to the promise of America.

Obama on Iraq, one of the two biggest apology opportunities:

America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis.

Obama on systematic U.S. torture, the other one:

I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

Not a word of apology. On Afghanistan, he said “despite the costs involved, America’s commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists.” He looked squarely at the conspiracy theories about 9/11 in the Muslim world and called them the garbage that they are. “Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. … These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.”

But by far the bravest things Obama said were about Israel and Palestine. He called the U.S.’s ties with Israel “unbreakable” and called the anti-Semitism sadly on display in the Muslim world not just disgusting but counterproductive: “Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.” This came complete with Holocaust references. Hint, hint: Iran.

Then came his exhortations to the Palestinians, which could not possibly have been what they expected:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Not only does Obama’s eloquent defense of Israel prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from claiming Obama is cavalier about Israeli security in order to continue his intransigence on Israel’s road-map commitments, but he bluntly told Hamas, “To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

The speech effectively disarms the peace-process rejectionists. And to think: he did it all without a word of apology.