Egyptian novelist and political commentator Ahdaf Soueif spoke with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel today on the eve of President Barack Obama's Cairo, Egypt speech tomorrow to give her sense of what Egyptians want to hear from the American president.

souief
Eamonn McCabe for The Guardian

Ahdaf Soueif

Soueif's view is that Obama needs to specifically address Palestine and Gaza for his speech to be viewed as credible by Egyptians. Furthermore, she said Obama should refrain from the anodyne statements about how great a religion Islam is. Muslims have heard that before, even from his predecessor. They want to hear more substance.

An excerpt from their conversation:

ROBERT: Is Cairo the right place for a U.S. president to address Arabs and Muslims all over the world?

SOUIEF: Yeah, I think it's a good place. Obviously the president needed a country that was part of the so-called moderate part of the Arab world. And Egypt has always been a natural leader. It's fallen off this position in the last few years but it's a necessary if not sufficient sort of player for anything to happen in the region. It's a very good place.

SIEGEL: Put us in the mind of students at Cairo University who might hear this speech. What could an American president say or do that would conceivably say or do that would be meaningful to them?

SOUIEF: Right, well if we're talking about a wish list, I think just listening to a lot of people here over the last few days people would really like to hear something substantive rather than sort of affirmations that Islam is a great culture and so on.

It would really be quite nice if the president's speech would address all the people of the world. The constant pinpointing of Muslims and the Muslim world that has been so much of Western discourse over the last decade is really something that President Obama needs to turn away from.

It was very much the discourse of the previous administration and even when it's used to say 'Oh, Islam is a great faith, we have no problem with it,' it is still fudging the issues. Because the issues are political rather than cultural.

And so that's really point number one, which is to address political, economic issues and to address the interest of the people rather than make cultural statements to do with Islam.

SIEGEL: When you speak of those issues, you mean what for example?

SOUIEF: Well, topmost in everybody's mind really is the question of Palestine. That is absolutely at the center of all the conflicts in the region. The conflicts that we're living through. The one's that we've had... The president has already spoken about settlements.

We need to hear more. That's what I hear everybody (say). And we need a specific mention of Gaza. The predicament of the people of Gaza, the 1.5 million who are under siege is a very, very hard one and it's close to everyone's heart.

Listen to All Things Considered for more of this interview.