The UN General Assembly: Hypocrites on Parade

We all saw highlights of President Trump’s speech. But what did other world leaders have to say?

Sure, Donald Trump got all the publicity. That’s par for the course when you threaten to “totally destroy North Korea.”

But this is a blog about Islam, so rather than North Korea, the focus here is the Muslim world. What did the various world leaders have to say about that?

I'll start with President Trump: he called out the “vile and sinister ideology” of “radical Islamic terrorism.” In particular, he singled out Iran’s “corrupt dictatorship” and “murderous regime.” Good stuff, noticeably absent from his 9/11 and Afghanistan speeches. Still, it's mostly a rehash of his May 21 address in Riyadh, which I covered previously.

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel shared President Trump’s concern about Iran: “From the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean,” he said, “from Tehran to Tartus, an Iranian curtain is descending across the Middle East.” (If you don’t follow the reference, look it up. “Iron Curtain speech.” Get it? Iron Curtain/Iranian Curtain).

Hassan Rouhani of Iran came back swinging. He called the accusations against his country “ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric” from a “rogue newcomer.”

Overall, President Rouhani wins the award for smarminess. “Our ambassadors are our poets, our mystics, and our philosophers,” he intoned piously. But my favorite part was, “The path of moderation nurtures beauty. Deadly-weapons exports are not beautiful; rather peace is.” He should know; his country is exporting weapons all over the Middle East to fight its proxy wars, including the humanitarian catastrophes in Yemen and Syria.

Rouhani concluded with a sales pitch for investment in the Iranian economy. He invited “all those who seek peace, security, and progress through partnership and cooperation among nations to visit Iran.” I’d actually like to take him up on that. I discovered in the course of research for my book The Thread of Reason that Iran is a country of spectacular and diverse natural beauty which, to its credit, takes great pride in its wealth of historical monuments, even pre-Islamic ones. Those who seek to destroy the monuments of the Confederate States of America could take a lesson from the Iranians. Still I think I’ll postpone my visit until I can travel in Iran without fear of being arrested and tried behind closed doors on dubious charges of espionage, as has been the fate of other Americans in that country.

Abdu’l-Fattah as-Sisi of Egypt presides over one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. It’s a place where Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University student who was researching trade unions in 2016 mysteriously disappeared. His corpse, showing signs of excruciating torture, turned up in a ditch along a highway nine days later. In another story, just this week, an Egyptian court sentenced some 500 people in a mass trial for their role in the 2013 anti-government demonstrations. Amnesty International reported that 330 of them had already been detained for four years or more, and among these, there was evidence against only two of them. So one can only marvel at the irony of President as-Sisi lecturing the world body on “upholding the notion of the modern nation-state, which is based on the principles of citizenship, equality, rule of law, and human rights.” In a less hypocritical vein, he continued that he intended to defeat “any attempts at retracting to doctrinal, sectarian, ethnic, or tribal loyalties.” You read that right. No loyalty to religion, culture, or ideas allowed. One must be loyal only to the State.

On the subject of terror, President as-Sisi said, “We in the Muslim world need to face our reality and work together to rectify misconstrued notions which have become an ideological pretext for terrorism and their destructive discourse. As you may recall, Egypt has launched an initiative to rectify religious discourse in order to revive the moderate and tolerant values of Islam.” This showed some insight in that the roots of terror are ideological, but as-Sisi is mistaken that Islam has been misconstrued. While the ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda isn’t the only possible interpretation of Muslim scripture, it’s certainly an interpretation with deep roots in that scripture. As for the prospect of any government “rectifying” religious discourse, or any discourse—that is truly chilling.

President as-Sisi also called for “global order that can face challenges, such as climate change.”

Mahmud Abbas, leader of the Palestinians, called Israel a colonial, Apartheid, occupying power, but nevertheless he promised that “upon Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied in 1967, the Arab and Islamic States would recognize Israel and normalize relations with it.” One has to wonder about his sincerity, since he then went on to denounce the “historical injustice” of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the document which laid the foundation for Israel’s right to existence in the first place. In any case, we're unlikely ever to put Mr. Abbas's sincerity to the test. There's only a small chance he'll ever have to follow through on this promise. Territories "occupied" in 1967 include East Jerusalem, which Israel views as part of its eternal, undivided capital.

As for Abbas’s view of the roots of terror, he claimed that “draining the swamp of colonial occupation of our land and ending its unjust, oppressive, and illegal practices against our people would greatly affect the fight against terrorism, depriving terrorist groups of one of the key rallying cries they exploit to promote their repugnant ideas.” This is an argument that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, recently called “pure, unadulterated insanity.”

Mr. Abbas also said, “We once again affirm our commitment to…the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, First State Counsellor of Myanmar, chose not to attend, due to the anti-Muslim violence engulfing Rakhine State in her country; I wrote about that earlier this week. Instead, Counsellor Suu Kyi sent Vice President U Henry Van Thio, who for the most part parroted the awful speech that the First Counsellor delivered on Tuesday. But not to worry. Despite the atrocities in Rakhine, Mr. Van Thio assured the world that, “Myanmar welcomes the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”

Well, that gives you some flavor of the 72nd UN General Assembly. As I read through page after page of self-inflicted grievances and smug hypocrisy, not to mention the pathological obsession with climate change, there was one question that kept nagging at me:

Why is the United States part of this?

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Transcripts and video of the speeches from the 72nd UNGA may be found on the UN Website.