The president hits on points and phrases I have used time and again whenever I’ve written about the Middle East.
One Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few days…that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.
This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.
And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.
As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.
Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in.
The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people — of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.
Thank you.
Echoing his Cairo Speech, Obama again insisted on the moral force and efficacy of non-violence, by saying the Egyptian activists put “the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” That last part about the arc of history is a favorite of the president’s, and is printed on the Oval Office carpet. It was said by Martin Luther King Jr. in his final speech as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August 16, 1967. In the address, he reaffirmed his commitment to love and non-violence, and his optimistic belief that blacks would eventually overcome their present difficulties. Here’s the quote in context:
Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: Truth crushed to earth will rise again. Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right:
Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. This is for hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.
What King puts here in biblical and religious terms is also the secular progressive hope. Namely, that through our collective efforts we constitute a creative force in the universe working to pull down gigantic mountains of evil, and that though the path is long and sometimes despairing, it is ultimately a path towards justice. History is not cyclical, and pre-destination does not exist.
Just as importantly, our president is a faithful student of Dr. King. In his Cairo speech he said that violence “is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered…” He told the people of the Nile and of the Occupired Territories that “violence is dead end,” and that “resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.”
Perhaps the Egyptian organizers learned this for themselves, but it didn’t hurt to hear it from the president of the United States, who happens to have been sending Hosni Mubarak billions in cash every year. And, as if to drive the point home once more, President Obama went on to quote Dr. King directly: “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.”
Until yesterday, Arabs could truthfully say that non-violence never toppled an Arab tyrant. They can’t say that anymore. Alhamdulillah!
