Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (103 page)

As the public’s willingness to believe the worst increases—that is to say, as cynicism increases—the only political messages that seem to affect the outcome of elections are those that seek to paint the opposition as a gang of bandits and fools who couldn’t be trusted to pour water out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel.

This fixation on character assassination rather than on defining issues feeds the voracious appetite of tabloid journalism for scandal. And now whets the growing appetite of other journalistic organizations for the same sort of fare….

Where, then, do we search for healing? What is our strategy for reconciliation with our future and where is our vision for sustainable hope?

I have come to believe that our healing can be found in our relationships to one another and in a shared commitment to higher purposes in the face of adversity.

At the 1992 Democratic convention, I talked about a personal event that fundamentally changed the way I viewed the world: an accident that almost killed our son. I will not repeat the story here today except to say that the most important lesson for me was that people I didn’t even know reached out to me and to my family to lift us up in their hearts and in their prayers with compassion of such intensity that I felt it as a palpable force, a healing reaching out of those multitudes of caring souls and falling on us like a mantle of divine grace.

Since then I have dwelled on our connections to one another and on the fact that as human beings, we are astonishingly similar in the most important parts of our existence.

I don’t know what barriers in my soul had prevented me from understanding emotionally that basic connection to others until after they reached out to me in the dark of my family’s sorrow. But I suppose it was a form of cynicism on my part. If cynicism is based on alienation and fragmentation, I believe that the brokenness that separates the cynic from others is the outward sign of an inner division between the head and the heart. There is something icily and unnaturally intellectual about the cynic. This isolation of intellect from feelings and emotions is the essence of his condition. For the cynic, feelings are as easily separated from the reality others see as ethics are separated from behavior, and as life is cut off from any higher purpose.

Having felt their power in my own life, I believe that sympathy and compassion are revolutionary forces in the world at large and that they are working now.

A year after the accident, when our family’s healing process was far advanced, I awoke early one Sunday morning in 1990, turned on the television set, and watched in amazement as another healing process began, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Last month, I attended his inauguration when he was sworn as president of the new South Africa in what was a stupendous defeat for cynicism in our time. Many were moved to tears as he introduced three men who had come as his personal guests—three of his former jailers—and described how they had reached across the chasm that had separated them as human beings and had become personal friends….

For my part, in the twenty-five years since my Harvard graduation, I have come to believe in hope over despair, striving over resignation, faith over cynicism.

I believe in the power of knowledge to make the world a better place. Cynics may say: Human beings have never learned anything from history. All that is truly useful about knowledge is that it can provide you with advantages over the pack. But the cynics are wrong: We have the capacity to learn from our mistakes and transcend our past. Indeed. in this very place we have been taught that truth—
veritas
—can set us free.

I believe in finding fulfillment in family, for the family is the true center of a meaningful life. Cynics may say: All families are confining and ultimately dysfunctional. The very idea of family is outdated and unworkable. But the cynics are wrong: It is in our families that we learn to love.

I believe in serving God and trying to understand and obey God’s will for our lives. Cynics may wave the idea away, saying God is a myth, useful in providing comfort to the ignorant and in keeping them obedient. I know in my heart—beyond all arguing and beyond any doubt—that the cynics are wrong.

I believe in working to achieve social justice and freedom for all. Cynics may scorn this notion as naive, claiming that all our efforts for equal opportunity, for justice, for freedom, have created only a wasteland of failed hopes. But the cynics are wrong: Freedom is our destiny; justice is our guide; we shall overcome.

I believe in protecting the earth’s environment against an unprecedented onslaught. Cynics may laugh out loud and say there is no utility in a stand of thousand-year-old trees, a fresh breeze, or a mountain stream. But the cynics are wrong: We are part of God’s earth, not separate from it.

I believe in you. Each of you individually. And all of you here as a group. The cynics say you are motivated principally by greed and that ultimately you will care for nothing other than yourselves. But the cynics are wrong. You care about each other, you cherish freedom, you treasure justice, you seek truth.

And finally, I believe in America. Cynics will say we have lost our way, that the American century is at its end. But the cynics are wrong. America is still the model to which the world aspires. Almost everywhere in the world the values that the United States has proclaimed, defended, and tried to live are now rising.

In the end, we face a fundamental choice: cynicism or faith. Each equally capable of taking root in our souls and shaping our lives as self-fulfilling
prophecies. We must open our hearts to one another and build on all the vast and creative possibilities of America. This is a task for a confident people, which is what we have been throughout our history and what we still are now in our deepest character.

I believe in our future.

“I have endured a great deal in my forty years on this planet,” Benazir Bhutto told an Atlanta audience in 1993. “The members of my party have been victimized, tortured, kidnapped, sometimes raped, and even killed. My brave husband… was imprisoned for over two painful years, held hostage against my political career for no other crime than being married to me. Every possible method of coercion was applied to
me to abandon my struggle, my party, my people, and to give in to forces of tyranny pressuring me to quit politics.”

Adjusting her Muslim head scarf—a gesture from this handsome woman that punctuates and adds dramatic emphasis to oratorical pauses—she recalled a line of the poet Tennyson quoted to her by her father, the former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, writing from his cell before he was hanged by the dictator who had seized power: “Ah, what shall I be at fifty… If I find the world so bitter at twenty-five.”

Within a few months, her Pakistani countrymen and women entrusted her with the prime ministership for the second time; in 1996, a military-backed leader, charging corruption, ousted her again.

Born to the aristocracy, educated by Catholic nuns at a convent school, and later at Harvard and Oxford, favorite child of Pakistan’s leader, Ms. Bhutto learned the dark side of life in solitary confinement after her father’s downfall. She spoke out to defend his reputation when such talk was costly, which had an effect on her speaking style: well-modulated but forthright, well-mannered with a touch of defiance.

When Sarajevo was under siege, she joined Tansu Ciller, prime minister of Turkey, in a visit to embattled Muslims in the Bosnian capital, helping to focus world attention on their suffering. The picture of two Muslim women, both leaders of their nations, asserting solidarity with their coreligionists under fire, also reminded Westerners that not all Islam was male-dominated. In Beijing on September 4, 1995, she spoke to a world conference of women and drove that point home with an eloquence derived from a tempestuous life in politics.

***

AS THE FIRST
woman ever elected to head an Islamic nation, I feel a special responsibility about issues that relate to women.

In addressing the new exigencies of the new century, we must translate dynamic religion into a living reality. We must live by the true spirit of Islam, not only by its rituals. And for those of you who may be ignorant of Islam, cast aside your preconceptions about the role of women in our religion.

Contrary to what many of you may have come to believe, Islam embraces a rich variety of political, social, and cultural traditions. The fundamental ethos of Islam is tolerance, dialogue, and democracy.

Just as in Christianity and Judaism, we must always be on guard for those who will exploit and manipulate the Holy Book for their own narrow
political ends, who will distort the essence of pluralism and tolerance for their own extremist agendas.

To those who claim to speak for Islam but who would deny to women our place in society, I say:

The ethos of Islam is equality, equality between the sexes. There is no religion on earth that, in its writing and teachings, is more respectful of the role of women in society than Islam.

My presence here, as the elected woman prime minister of a great Muslim country, is testament to the commitment of Islam to the role of women in society.

It is this tradition of Islam that has empowered me, has strengthened me, has emboldened me.

It was this heritage that sustained me during the most difficult points in my life, for Islam forbids injustice; injustice against people, against nations, against women.

It denounces inequality as the gravest form of injustice.

It enjoins its followers to combat oppression and tyranny.

It enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind.

It shuns race, color, and gender as a basis of distinction amongst fellow men.

When the human spirit was immersed in the darkness of the Middle Ages, Islam proclaimed equality between men and women. When women were viewed as inferior members of the human family, Islam gave them respect and dignity.

When women were treated as chattels, the Prophet of Islam (
Peace Be Upon Him
) accepted them as equal partners.

Islam codified the rights of women.
The Koran
elevated their status to that of men. It guaranteed their civic, economic, and political rights. It recognized their participative role in nation building.

Sadly, the Islamic tenets regarding women were soon discarded. In Islamic society, as in other parts of the world, their rights were denied. Women were maltreated, discriminated against, and subjected to violence and oppression, their dignity injured and their role denied.

Women became the victims of a culture of exclusion and male dominance. Today more women than men suffer from poverty, deprivation, and discrimination. Half a billion women are illiterate. Seventy percent of the children who are denied elementary education are girls.

The plight of women in the developing countries is unspeakable. Hunger, disease, and unremitting toil is their fate. Weak economic growth and inadequate social support systems affect them most seriously and directly.

They are the primary victims of structural adjustment processes, which
necessitate reduced state funding for health, education, medical care, and nutrition. Curtailed resource flows to these vital areas impact most severely on the vulnerable groups, particularly women and children.

This, Madam Chairperson, is not acceptable. It offends my religion. It offends my sense of justice and equity. Above all, it offends
common
sense.

That is why Pakistan, the women of Pakistan, and I personally have been fully engaged in recent international efforts to uphold women’s rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
enjoins the elimination of discrimination against women.

The
Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies
provide a solid framework for advancing women’s rights around the world. But the goal of equality, development, and peace still eludes us.

Sporadic efforts in this direction have failed. We are satisfied that the
Beijing Platform of Action
encompasses a comprehensive approach toward the empowerment of women. This is the right approach and should be fully supported.

Women cannot be expected to struggle alone against the forces of discrimination and exploitation. I recall the words of Dante, who reminded us that “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.”

Today in this world, in the fight for the liberation of women, there can be no neutrality.

My spirit carries many a scar of a long and lonely battle against dictatorship and tyranny. I witnessed, at a young age, the overthrow of democracy, the assassination of an elected prime minister, and a systematic assault against the very foundations of a free society.

But our faith in democracy was not broken. The great Pakistani poet and philosopher Dr. Allama Iqbal says, “Tyranny cannot endure forever.” It did not. The will of our people prevailed against the forces of dictatorship.

But, my dear sisters, we have learned that democracy alone is not enough.

Freedom of choice alone does not guarantee justice.

Equal rights are not defined only by political values.

Social justice is a triad of freedom, an equation of liberty:

Delegates, sisters, the child who is starving has no human rights. The girl who is illiterate has no future.

The woman who cannot plan her life, plan her family, plan a career, is fundamentally not free….

I am determined to change the plight of women in my country. More than sixty million of our women are largely sidelined.