So, Obama wants to give a speech in a Muslim capital sometime in his first one hundred days. What capital should he select? I think that all depends on what kind of message he wants to convey. Overall, it seems to me that he should select an Arab capital for the simple reason that the heart of Islam is the Arab culture. He could certainly give a speech in Jakarta or Kabul or Islamabad or Ankara, but it wouldn’t necessarily send a message to all of the Islamic world.
Selecting a location also depends on the message. If he is going to lecture Muslims about terrorism he might choose Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but I don’t think that’s the message he wants to send. If he wants to commit to resolving the Israel-Palestine issue, he has the thorny problem of choosing Ramallah over Jerusalem, or vice-versa. If he wants to talk about human rights and electoral reforms, he couldn’t do better than Cairo. If he wants to talk about economics and trade, he should probably go to the Gulf.
All in all, Cairo is probably the most appropriate locale. It would serve well enough to talk about all the issues, without sending much in the way of unintended messages.
