The Damascus medical school dropout has had a few dressing downs in recent years, swapping Osama bin Laden’s look for a neatly trimmed beard and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s green fatigues or a corporate blazer and chinos. “People in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s definitely have different personalities. This is human nature,” he assured CNN shortly before Assad’s fall.
But withdrawing his hand hints at exactly where Shara will sit on the spectrum of radical political Islam and the limits of his recent modernization. It may also indicate restrictions that must be adhered to in order to sustain Islamic warriors.
Baerbock tried to shed light on the incident, telling the broadcaster: “Traveling here, it was clear that there was definitely not going to be an ordinary handshake.”
But over the years of reporting on political Islam, observing how radical Islamists (or jihadists) interact with women who claim to have become more moderate has been somewhat of a litmus test for this columnist. And refusing to engage, look a woman directly in the eye, or shake her hand tends to be a sinister trend when it comes to inclusivity.
In addition to indicating how moderate a handshake has become, a handshake, or lack of a handshake, also speaks to how prepared a leader is to be practical.
Of course, many conservative Muslims believe that unrelated men and women should never have contact, but there were exceptions. For example, the handshake, the modern standard greeting for politicians and businessmen around the world when conducting diplomacy, was one that traditional Saudi and Emirati rulers readily embraced. In 1987, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd had no problem shaking the hand of then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, understanding that the gesture conveyed trust, or at least a willingness to engage.
