Our Intransigent President

Obama's approval rating has dropped in recent days from a glowing 70 percent to a disquieting 50. The US economy is still flailing and the Democrat's health care plan is not going very well either. Troubled times.

Our president's popularity has flagged too in recent days, plummeting from 64 percent when he came into office a year ago to a dismal 32. Zardari's constant waffling on the judges’ issue and the seventeenth amendment has cost him the support of the Pakistani public. The government's deplorable mishandling of the sugar crisis this month will probably hurt him further.

But where Obama is facing the challenge head on, reaching out to ordinary Americans through town halls, appearances on talk shows, a Congress address and so on, Zardari has either absconded on pricey foreign tours or remained locked up in the presidential palace. Obama it seems is back on the campaign trail just a few months after assuming office, doing his best to reassure Americans and rally them to his cause. He is taking serious flak from detractors: some 2000 protesters besieged him in Portsmouth, N.H., where he addressed a town hall meeting in August, some chanting "Euthanize Obama!" But Obama remains undeterred. Conversely, Zardari’s approach has been to whine endlessly about some uncertain minus one conspiracy against him. He has decided to deal with the barrage of criticism by petulantly threatening to arrest Pakistanis who make fun of him in personal emails and text messages.

The vast difference in the maturity of these two leaders should be quite obvious. Zardari has so far made no concerted effort to reach out to the public. Hell, he hasn’t even bothered to visit Swat since Operation Rah-i-Rast was launched in April. It is extremely ironic that a democratic leader should have such antipathy to the people he was elected to serve. One can only hope that on his latest two-week foreign tour, which will culminate in a visit to Washington, Zardari will use his time productively and learn a thing or two from Obama (instead of chatting up married women). Zardari has to realize that, short of abandoning Pakistan's latest foray into democracy, the only way to keep him and the PPP in power in the long run is to give the people what they want.

Admission is the First Step

Zardari was very impressive in his address at the UN Interfaith Conference. Despite spending half the speech effusively praising the Saudi King, he did admit – though very briefly – that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are both serious problems that need to be dealt with. His exact words were:

"Bigotry manifested in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism must be combatted."

Yes, he mentioned anti-Semitism only once, but implicit in the lumping together of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism was the idea that they are two sides of the same coin. The West's Islamophobia and the Muslim world's anti-Semitism are both a result of grievously mishandled geopolitics in the absence of meaningful people to people interaction.

Muslim anti-Semitism is based solely on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Muslims never had anything against the Jewish faith. In fact, while anti-Semitism raged in Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Muslim world gave protection to Jews. Now, however, Jew is a dirty word in places like Pakistan. Synagogues have been burnt down in Karachi, the old Jewish cemetery desecrated and Jews – South Asian Jews mind you – have been run out of the country. Pakistani hatred of Jews is blind and overwhelming and rests on the false premise that Israel and individual Jews are the same.

The West's Islamophobia rests on the same misconception: the Muslim terrorists and the rest of the Muslim world are the same. Hate crimes against Muslims in America and Europe have been on the increase. In the US presidential elections, the label of Muslim was used almost as a slur on Obama, and the most revealing thing about it was that his Muslim middle name, Hussein, was a big concern for Americans.

Yet Americans acknowledge their problem and many in the liberal media try to fight Islamophobia. But in Pakistan, anti-Semitism has never been challenged by the media, intellectuals or politicians. Zardari's admission of the problem is a first step. His proposed solution, which followed the admission also seems to be in the right direction:

"Dialogue, and not discord, between civilizations and faiths must be encouraged... Let us not isolate people, let us engage people."

It is vague but it is something. Of course it would have been infinitely better if Zardari had said this to the Pakistani people and not a bunch of diplomats and world leaders and talked a little more specifically and extensively about anti-Semitism. There is a rumor that he might meet Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at one of the dinners. I for one hope he does. I hope that Pakistanis are allowed to go to Israel and Israelis allowed to come to Pakistan. Getting to know each other as human beings as opposed to demonic caricatures will only further the mission for tolerance for which all these distinguished persons have gathered at the UN this week.