Saturday 31 / October / 2026
Dear Secretary Kennedy,
Your wholesale remarks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 26 October 2026 concerning the Arab people have given me considerable pause. Their sweeping characterisations raise troubling questions about fairness, historical understanding and the responsibility that accompanies public office, all the more so when they come from a member of a family that has long championed the ideals of liberty, equality and human dignity on which America was founded.
For generations, young people across the Arab world, like their peers elsewhere, have admired the Kennedy family for its intellectual vitality and moral courage in advancing those ideals. President John F. Kennedy’s memorable exhortation “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” led young Arabs, as it did young people around the globe, to regard public service as a noble calling. Your father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was admired for his compassion and his commitment to human dignity, and your uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, for his lifelong dedication to civil rights and social justice.
Many young Arabs have also studied in American universities, where they have found academic excellence, scientific achievement, a spirit of enterprise and intellectual openness. That experience has strengthened their belief in the values on which America was built and which your family long championed: individual opportunity, public service and understanding between nations.
It is against this background that your remarks are so difficult to comprehend. You stated that the world’s 500 million Arabs do not produce science or literature, and do not win the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize. You attributed this to the Muslim Brotherhood, describing Arab societies as stagnant and given to hatred, war and victimisation. These assertions are contradicted by both history and the evidence of our own time, as I will later illustrate.
Before turning to that evidence, however, I would suggest that the issue is more fundamental. Even if the Arab world had produced no laureates, no celebrated scientists and no acclaimed writers, would that diminish the inherent dignity of its people? Is the worth of a civilisation to be measured by the prizes its citizens collect? Can the failings of particular governments, institutions or movements ever justify a judgement upon an entire people? Dignity is not a reward conferred for exceptional achievement; it is a principle owed to every people without condition. The record that follows is therefore offered not to prove that Arabs deserve respect, but to correct a statement that is simply untrue.
With that principle established, the factual claim can be answered directly, and your own words are the place to begin. You acknowledged that Arabs “used to produce” and “were the first to make books.” That tradition, which flourished in the Golden Age of Arab-Islamic civilisation, was far broader than is often recalled. It includes Al-Khwarizmi (algebra and mathematics), Ibn Sina (medicine and philosophy), Al-Razi (medicine and chemistry), Ibn al-Haytham (optics and physics), Al-Kindi (philosophy and mathematics), Al-Farabi (philosophy and political thought), Al-Battani (astronomy and trigonometry), Al-Biruni (astronomy and geography), Al-Zahrawi (surgery), Ibn al-Nafis (pulmonary circulation), Ibn Rushd (philosophy and jurisprudence), Al-Idrisi (geography and cartography), Al-Jazari (mechanical engineering), Al-Jahiz (literature and natural history), Al-Ghazali (philosophy and theology), Ibn Khaldun (history, sociology and economics), Jabir ibn Hayyan (early chemistry), Ibn Firnas (aviation pioneer), Ahmad bin Majid and Sulaiman Al-Mahri (maritime navigation), and Ibn Battuta (exploration and travel writing). Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez in 859, the first university in the world. Drawn from many peoples and regions, these scholars and innovators flourished within a civilisation in which Arabic was a principal language of science, philosophy and geography. They preserved, advanced and transmitted knowledge that later shaped the intellectual awakening of Europe.
That tradition did not end with the Golden Age. In modern science and mathematics, the record includes Ahmed Zewail (Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Elias James Corey (Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Moungi Bawendi (Nobel Prize in Chemistry), Omar Yaghi (Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Wolf Prize), Peter Medawar (Nobel Prize in Medicine), Michael Atiyah (Fields Medal), Farouk El-Baz (space science and geology), Charles Elachi (space exploration), Huda Zoghbi (neuroscience) and Rana Dajani (molecular biology). In engineering, Mohamed Atalla helped invent the MOSFET, the transistor that underpins modern electronics, and Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah was a prolific inventor at General Electric. In medicine, Michael DeBakey in the United States and Sir Magdi Yacoub in the United Kingdom stand among the most distinguished cardiac surgeons of the modern era. These men and women, Arabs and people of Arab heritage, have enriched scientific institutions and advanced human knowledge across the world.
Arab contributions extend well beyond science. In literature, they include Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize in Literature), Taha Hussein, Khalil Gibran, Amin Maalouf, Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani and Abu Muslim Al-Bahlani Al-Rawahi. In architecture, they include Zaha Hadid, the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize; Hassan Fathy, the Egyptian pioneer of vernacular design; and Rifat Chadirji, a leading figure of modern Iraqi architecture. In music, Fairuz, Umm Kulthum and Mohamed Abdel Wahab shaped the Arab world’s musical heritage, while Paul Anka, Shakira and Paula Abdul achieved global fame. In cinema and entertainment, they include Omar Sharif, Rami Malek, Salma Hayek, Tony Shalhoub and Danny Thomas. Danny Thomas also founded St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which has transformed the treatment of childhood cancer. In diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, Boutros Boutros-Ghali served as Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Salim Ahmed Salim, a Tanzanian of Arab ancestry, as President of the UN General Assembly and later Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Unity, while Anwar Sadat, Mohamed ElBaradei, Tawakkol Karman and the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet were each awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Americans of Arab heritage have also contributed substantially to the public life of the United States. Among them are George Mitchell (Senate Majority Leader), James Abourezk and James Abdnor (United States Senators), Spencer Abraham (Senator and Secretary of Energy), Ray LaHood (Secretary of Transportation), John H. Sununu (Governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of Staff), John E. Sununu (United States Senator), Chris Sununu (Governor of New Hampshire) and Ambassador Philip C. Habib (Under Secretary of State and President Reagan’s Special Envoy to the Middle East). Not least among them is Donna Shalala, who served for eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the very department you now head.
America’s relations with the Arab world also reach back to the earliest years of the republic. Morocco extended its friendship to the new nation in 1777 and formalised it through a Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1786. Algeria, Libya and Tunisia concluded treaties with the United States in the 1790s, though those early encounters were not free of conflict. Oman signed its Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States in 1833, and in 1840 the Sultana sailed into New York carrying Ahmad bin Na’aman Al-Kaabi, among the earliest Arab envoys to visit the United States. Arab states were thus among America’s first international partners, long before your family assumed its distinguished place in American public life.
None of this is to deny that the Arab world faces serious political, economic, educational and institutional challenges. Like all societies, Arab countries have known periods of remarkable achievement alongside episodes of conflict, intolerance and political failure. These shortcomings deserve honest examination and constructive criticism. But there is a profound difference between criticising the failures of societies and disparaging the capabilities of their people.
You went on to assert that “all that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood.” You are entitled to criticise any political movement, but this one is banned or proscribed in the majority of Arab states and plays little part in the government, education or public life of most of the region. It can hardly be held responsible for the condition of nearly half a billion people. The Arab world is not synonymous with the Brotherhood: it comprises twenty-two countries with distinct histories and institutions, and is home to ancient Christian and Jewish communities as well as Druze, Yazidis and followers of other faiths. To treat it as a single, undifferentiated mass is to set aside the distinctions on which any serious understanding depends.
There is a further consideration I would invite you to reflect upon. Public figures inevitably work within shifting political climates, where the mood of the moment can shape the language of public life. Yet those entrusted with public responsibility, particularly those heir to a distinguished tradition of service, have a duty to exercise independent judgement. The dignity of a people should never become a casualty of political expedience. The true measure of political courage lies not in echoing the sentiments of the hour, but in upholding enduring principles when they are least fashionable.
It was precisely this quality that made your family so widely admired. President Kennedy taught a generation to see public service as a noble obligation. Your father spoke with rare compassion about poverty, injustice and racial discrimination during an era when such positions went against the current. Senator Edward Kennedy devoted much of his career to civil rights, healthcare and the welfare of the less fortunate. Their appeal transcended American politics because the values they championed, rooted in America’s founding ideals, were universal.
The assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963 and of your father in 1968 were mourned far beyond America’s shores, including across the Arab world, where young people felt those losses as their own.
For the many young Arabs who grew up admiring that family, it is unsettling to hear one of its members pass so sweeping a judgement on an entire people. May I therefore invite you, Mr. Secretary, to reconsider your remarks? To acknowledge that they were mistaken in fact and unfair to millions of decent, hardworking and accomplished people would not diminish your standing. The willingness to revisit a mistaken judgement is itself a mark of intellectual strength and moral confidence.
The dignity of every people is a principle shared by all humanity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 and drafted under Eleanor Roosevelt with the Lebanese philosopher Charles Malik among its architects, affirms that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
I offer these reflections not out of anger or hostility, but out of respect for America and for the ideals that its founders set down and your family sought to advance. I regret that a Kennedy should speak of an entire people in terms so far removed from those ideals. There could be no more fitting tribute to that heritage than to uphold them when they are most severely tested.
With sincere regards,
Ahmed Saif Al-Rawahi
Sultanate of Oman
30 October 2026
