I brought my anthropologist’s set of tools as well as an understanding of how cultural context—with customs, norms, rituals, religion, language, and self-determination—is critical to impactful development work. An increasing aspect of my work became to help U.S. government officials understand the role of religion in development efforts and train them in how to engage in a meaningful, consistent, and authentic manner.
During my first year on the job, I had a quiet and quick chat with President Barack Obama at a White House dinner event. I shared with him how his mother’s anthropological work had inspired me to bring self-determination to the fore. And I mentioned that I’d just hosted a “Spirituality and Conflict” seminar for government folks (which ended up having standing-room-only attendance). With wide eyes and his trademark smile, he encouraged me to be the “action anthropologist” needed in U.S. government settings.
Within a few months of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, I was pulled into meetings with White House staffers as they responded to the administration’s push for a new approach to engage with communities in Muslim-majority countries. The discussions in interagency spaces were both illuminating and hopeful. We talked about the diversity and complexity of Muslim communities. We lamented how U.S. government-led dialogue and engagement in Muslim countries had been patronizing and often unnecessarily couched only in counterterrorism framing. And we heard from the president how he wanted to change that.
So we had more conversations and brainstorming sessions using whiteboards, Google Docs, and handwritten sticky notes. All of this was to concretize the president’s vision for mutual respect, authentic understanding, and true partnerships instead of identifying “recipients” and “beneficiaries.”
Ultimately, President Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech created an impetus for recalibrating U.S. development and diplomatic work in Muslim-majority countries and gave those of us within the government the justification for doing the work we knew to be vital. But in building components of the speech and its list of deliverables across agencies, it was clear from the president himself and us staffers involved in framing this historic address that this was to be a model for greater U.S. engagement with the world writ large. As much as it was focused on building a relationship with one demographic, it was part of the global engagement strategy that would recalibrate the U.S. government’s understanding of the world–and how the rest of the world would understand the United States.
The talking points for the global engagement approach I helped develop were fundamentally about how the U.S. government works, and how the president’s mandate for a new beginning was operationalized. It was global in scope, with the current focus on Muslim-majority communities as a model for institutionalizing this vision.
At USAID my position and work were bolstered by global engagement shaping how we engage and measure the impact of that engagement. We were no longer only interested in “outreach” for the sake of getting messages out. Rather, our interest was in pursuing true and consistent interaction, learning, and growing in partnerships around the world. We also needed to build platforms for research and analysis that would better inform aid programming and policies. Towards this end, I was able to secure funding approval for a Regional Partnership for Culture and Development where research and community engagement would be prioritized as part of USAID’s mission in the Middle East and serve as a model for other regions. Consistent, meaningful involvement of communities meant people’s own trajectories and efforts were essential parts of the conversation rather than afterthoughts. And being more inclusive of who we engaged became streamlined so that traditional leaders, social entrepreneurs, and religious actors among others were increasingly part of the process of developing country strategies, rather than messengers for a policy or program.
A large part of global engagement was enhancing the government’s ability to engage with consistency and substance. We developed and implemented training modules that were incorporated in various training platforms. USAID missions and embassies asked for greater support in building their own religious literacy and in assessing how strategy and programming objectives were grounded in the cultural context.
As part of this flurry of engagement activities, I was able to design the first USAID-hosted conference on “Religious and Community Leaders in Advancing Development in Asia.” The event served as a model for creating collaborative spaces for religious institutions and actors to collaborate on development priorities. Additionally, I was heavily involved in the USAID-funded Leaders of Influence program that showcased how President Obama’s vision in the New Beginning speech could be replicated across the Global Engagement framework.
Much of this programming and capacity-building overseas was then built into our interagency efforts to define and consolidate religious engagement. With substantive input and feedback from many of us who had been working in the field for years, in 2013 the White House adopted and announced the U.S. Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement. The document encouraged U.S. diplomats and development professionals to engage and deepen relationships with religious leaders and faith communities as they carry out their foreign policy responsibilities.
Looking back at the legacy of the Cairo speech, I recognize that some things have changed and some things have stayed the same. Governments move painstakingly slowly; someone described bureaucracy as a herd of turtles. I suggested to colleagues that we could be the “ninja turtles” and make things happen more quickly and creatively. And this was reflected in what we did to actualize the Cairo speech by mandating interagency cooperation and regular listening sessions with U.S. government staffers both in DC and overseas. This effort, paired with investing time and resources in building genuine partnerships of respect with communities (not only state actors), are lessons today in how to create meaningful and impactful engagement that is people-to-people centered. But the challenge remains: how do these critical approaches, programs, and engagements become institutionalized so they are not disregarded by new administrations or leadership?
The larger political and foreign policy implications for Muslim-majority countries as legacies of the Cairo speech have been debated and known to be more than problematic to be sure. Some of the Obama administration's most promising efforts never quite made it to the finish line, and other U.S. policies are less than desirable—even disastrous—to this day. Foreign policy decisions (especially related to dictators, corrupt rulers, and illegal occupation) made during the Obama administration frustrated the people of Muslim-majority countries and continue to affect their lives. Although the speech itself was revolutionary for how the U.S. government would engage the world, the administration was not always supportive of the revolutions people were leading and dying for around the world.
Nevertheless, for me as a Muslim serving in the administration at the time, there was an optimism in that moment that was collected in the speech. More significantly, the ripples of action from it within the U.S. government created the possibility of engaging in a different and better way.
