<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
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