I know some of you are confused about the Barack Obama bowing backlash. You’re not alone: when Obama bowed deeply to Saudi King Abdullah during the G20 Summit last week in London, the king himself looked confused.
Notice that he didn’t return the bow. Also notice that no one else bowed to anyone in the room. This is what makes what Obama’s gesture so embarrassing for America. It is because the Saudi king himself knew that bowing was not proper protocol. In his eager enthusiasm to impress the Arab world, Obama has made a few clumsy gaffes, but none as blatantly obvious as bowing down to another world leader.
Here’s what the Saudi king himself said about bowing:
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“Brothers, there is something on my mind I want to tell you,” King Abdullah told delegations of princes, officials and ordinary citizens at his palace in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
“Kissing hands is something alien to our values and ethics, and is refused by free and honest souls,” he said, quoted by the official SPA news agency.
“Moreover, it leads to bowing, which violates God’s law as the faithful bows only to the one and only God.”
Now you know why the white House wants the incident to fade away. The other part of this is that Obama was most assuredly told in advance what the proper protocol was for greeting leaders of the free world, but he decided to blatantly ignore the protocol in his haste to prove to the Arab world where his true loyalties lie.
