Aziz Poonawalla: Sarah Palin on Islam and China

Here's a review of Governor Palin's Hong Kong speech from Aziz Poonawalla, a Muslim who writes for the Beliefnet blog (I've excluded the parts of his blog post where he just quotes directly from the excerpts released by Governor Palin):

I've been bluntly critical of Sarah Palin before when I felt it warranted, but I've never had anything but respect for her formidable intellect and political saavy. I think she's easily the most credible challenger to President Obama in 2012 and while I still think Obama would prevail, he's in for a tough fight if the GOP nominates her....

But as I said, she's brilliant, and her speech in Hong Kong last week is ample evidence - she's coined the next great incantation of conservatism with which to rally conservatives to the worn Republican banner again: "common sense conservatism." It's far more faithful to conservatism's spirit than "compassionate conservatism" ever was. But more to the point, she actually embodies it - it's not just a cynical catchphrase but a genuine worldview. A worldview I disagree with, but which is not hypocritical or internally inconsistent. She is an effective and compelling advocate for her point of view in this speech, which probably reads better than it sounds.

There are two things that stand out in this speech to me. The first is her emphasis on China...which only makes sense given she delivered the speech at the CLSA Pacific Markets Conference (which as you might suspect has China on the brain). She focused on China as an emerging power, and the ambiguity (daresay, inscrutability?) of its intentions...

This is really a very sound attitude; not one of communist-alarmism or fear mongering, but a strong willingness to engage while also reserving the right to critique. As she points out later, China certainly has no qualms in criticizing us. And yet she is absolutely clear and reasonable about China's potential as a "responsible" economic partner and relevance to regional stability. She also asks a rather insightful question: "How many books and articles have been written about the dangers of India's rise?" The answer is none, of course, and that fact in itself is interesting and revealing.

The second portion of interest were her remarks on the war on terror and Islam....

[S]he sounds positively Hillary-esque! She goes on to firmly express her support for the President's Afghanistan focus and urges him to send as many troops as Gen McChrystal requests. I find her admission that Iraq no longer being the central front of terrorism remarkable (if not revisionist).....

I fully and completely agree with Sarah Palin 100% here. Human rights are indeed universal; there is no "hegemony of human rights discourse". But neither can we impose our system and political traditions wholesale on another society. The trick is to cultivate those values but let them flower in a native fashion, from within.

Sane commentary about Islam (not to mention foreign policy) is extremely rare for a Republican politician courting the base nowadays. Given that Palin is Palin, she is probably the only GOP politician who can get away with taking a moderate tack on the issue of Islam. Perhaps in Palin lies the salvation of the GOP away from the angry fringe and back to the cooler shade of reason after all. If so, it will be irony indeed, considering that Palin played a central role in stirring that emotion and anger in the first place.

You can read the full blog post here and his previous blog post titled "word cloud and transcript: Sarah Palin on common-sense conservatism.