Barack's Barakah

So much has been focussed on Barack Obama's middle name Hussein that few have asked what his first name means. I only realised this last night while reading his autobiography 'Dreams From My Father', published before he even became a Senator for Illinois.

A friend of his at Occidental College in California asked him what his name meant.

"It means 'blessing' in Arabic. My grandfather was a Muslim" he explained.

For me, and probably any other Muslim reading that, it was an "Aha!" moment. Of course! Barack comes from 'barakah' or in Malay, 'rezeki'.

Today Barack's barakah showed itself. The son of a Kenyan father and an American mother, born in Hawaii and brought up in part in Indonesia, became President of the United States. A first in American history in so many ways.

I must say I am relieved and like so many other non-Americans who were glued to our TV screens this morning, thrilled to bits. Who knows what sort of American President Obama will be? We will certainly find out in the years to come. But for the moment, just the very idea of this young fresh-looking, different-looking man being in the White House is thrilling simply because it was unimaginable not so long ago, when it seemed we will never see the end of that inward-looking arrogant aggressive Bush-type presidency.

And oh, how nice to think of Michelle Obama as First Lady! She is what women look like all over the world these days, not Laura Bush, not Cindy McCain.

I just watched Obama's victory speech. How refreshing to see a victor who does not crow over his enemies, who is gracious towards the losers as well as those who did not vote for him. And who uses the opportunity of victory to reconcile and to unite.

"In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long." he said, "..And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress."

He reaches out to "... those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too."

How different is that from what we are used to hearing here, where divides are maintained and even enlarged after elections?

John McCain's speech conceding victory to Obama was no less gracious. He told his forlorn crowd that he called President-elect Obama to congratulate him and added, "In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving."

He then urged "all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

"Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that."

Our politicians, on all sides, can learn so much from such graciousness. That after the battle of elections is won, there is a bigger challenge, one of uniting the country, that needs to be met and won.

It does seem like a change has come over the world. And if a place like the US can change so much as to put someone like Barack Obama, the 'unlikeliest candidate' as he himself put it, in the White House, it gives hope to the rest of us too. Hope that the time will come when we won't have pudgy men with dubious intellects and suspect ethics as our only choices for leaders, that someone fresh, young and even female may one day rise to lead us into the future. If we have the barakah, insyaAllah.