[lbo-talk] "We the American Holy Warriors Have Arrived": FDR Addresses the Arabs

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Jan 29 17:00:10 PST 2007


<http://www.meforum.org/article/45> FDR Addresses the Arabs Middle East Quarterly March 2000 • VOLUME VII: NUMBER 1

In 1798, soon after landing in Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte issued a remarkable document in Arabic in which he informed the Egyptians that he hard arrived to "restore your rights from the hand of the [Muslim ruling] oppressors" and called on them to remain neutral in the contest ahead, threatening them with dire punishment should they disobey his orders.1

In an unlikely and obscure echo of Napoleon's famed appeal, President Franklin Roosevelt in October 1942 issued a similar proclamation in the Arabic language, this one ostensibly addressed to the entire Muslim world, but to North Africans in particular.2 October 1942 was the moment when British forces stopped Hitler's Afrika Korps at El Alamein; for the first time in two years, the Allies felt confident that they would keep the Germans out of the Middle East, and they sought to take advantage of this change in fortune to win Muslim favor. Roosevelt's appeal was part of this effort.

Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God,

the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems.

O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the

blessing of God be upon you.

This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons

of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as

the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of

sand in the sea.

Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived.

We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.

We have come to set you free. We have sailed across

the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are

landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and

into the city streets, and into the wide country sides,

and along the highways.

Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops,

and from the high places, and say the sound of the

drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the

women, and the voices even of small children.

Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.

We have come to set you free.

Speak with our fighting men and you will find them

pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart.

We are not as some other Christians whom ye have

known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers

consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared

in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told

about your country and about their Moslem brothers

and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly

spirit in the eyes of God.

Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy

Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore

as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.

If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose

our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us

the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see

our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble

for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with

any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.

Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be

the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness

and freedom.

Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God

will help us both.

Lo, the day of freedom hath come.

May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.

-- Roosevelt

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 The complete text was published in al-Jabarti, `Ajai'b al-Athar fi't-Tarajim wa'l-Akhbar, English trans., Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann, `Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti's History of Egypt (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 4-6.

2 Published in Anthony Cave Brown Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 104-95. It is not clear whether the Arabic translation of this text survives.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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