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 THE ONES WE HAVE HEARD so
far have been comforting but familiar. We stand for freedom and they hate
it. We are rich and they envy us. We are strong and they resent this. All
of which is true. But there are billions of poor and weak and oppressed
people around the world. They don’t turn planes into bombs. They don’t
blow themselves up to kill thousands of civilians. If envy were the cause
of terrorism, Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue and Mayfair would have become
morgues long ago. There is something stronger at work here than
deprivation and jealousy. Something that can move men to kill but also to
die.
Osama bin Laden has an answer—religion.
For him and his followers, this is a holy war between Islam and the
Western world. Most Muslims disagree. Every Islamic country in the world
has condemned the attacks of Sept. 11. To many, bin Laden belongs to a
long line of extremists who have invoked religion to justify mass murder
and spur men to suicide. The words “thug,” “zealot” and “assassin” all
come from ancient terror cults—Hindu, Jewish and Muslim, respectively—that
believed they were doing the work of God. The terrorist’s mind is its own
place, and like Milton’s Satan, can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of
hell. Whether it is the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo or Baruch Goldstein (who
killed scores of unarmed Muslims in Hebron), terrorists are almost always
misfits who place their own twisted morality above mankind’s. .gif)
 Fareed Zakaria joined us for a live talk on Friday, Oct.
12 to discuss the roots of anti-American rage in the Middle
East.
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The problem is
not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against
America. It’s that millions of people across the Islamic world seem to
agree.
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ADMIRATION FOR BIN
LADEN
But bin Laden and his
followers are not an isolated cult like Aum Shinrikyo or the Branch
Davidians or demented loners like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. They
come out of a culture that reinforces their hostility, distrust and hatred
of the West—and of America in particular. This culture does not condone
terrorism but fuels the fanaticism that is at its heart. To say that Al
Qaeda is a fringe group may be reassuring, but it is false. Read the Arab
press in the aftermath of the attacks and you will detect a not-so-hidden
admiration for bin Laden. Or consider this from the Pakistani newspaper
The Nation: “September 11 was not mindless terrorism for terrorism’s sake.
It was reaction and revenge, even retribution.” Why else is America’s
response to the terror attacks so deeply constrained by fears of an
“Islamic backlash” on the streets? Pakistan will dare not allow Washington
the use of its bases. Saudi Arabia trembles at the thought of having to
help us publicly. Egypt pleads that our strikes be as limited as possible.
The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious
war against America. It’s that millions of people across the Islamic world
seem to agree.
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This awkward
reality has led some in the West to dust off old essays and older
prejudices predicting a “clash of civilizations” between the West and
Islam. The historian Paul Johnson has argued that Islam is intrinsically
an intolerant and violent religion. Other scholars have disagreed,
pointing out that Islam condemns the slaughter of innocents and prohibits
suicide. Nothing will be solved by searching for “true Islam” or quoting
the Quran. The Quran is a vast, vague book, filled with poetry and
contradictions (much like the Bible). You can find in it condemnations of
war and incitements to struggle, beautiful expressions of tolerance and
stern strictures against unbelievers. Quotations from it usually tell us
more about the person who selected the passages than about Islam. Every
religion is compatible with the best and the worst of humankind. Through
its long history, Christianity has supported inquisitions and
anti-Semitism, but also human rights and social welfare. |
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WHY NOW?
Searching the history books is also of limited value.
From the Crusades of the 11th century to the Turkish expansion of the 15th
century to the colonial era in the early 20th century, Islam and the West
have often battled militarily. This tension has existed for hundreds of
years, during which there have been many periods of peace and even
harmony. Until the 1950s, for example, Jews and Christians lived peaceably
under Muslim rule. In fact, Bernard Lewis, the pre-eminent historian of
Islam, has argued that for much of history religious minorities did better
under Muslim rulers than they did under Christian ones. All that has
changed in the past few decades. So surely the relevant question we must
ask is, Why are we in a particularly difficult phase right now? What has
gone wrong in the world of Islam that explains not the conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 or the siege of Vienna of 1683 but Sept. 11,
2001? |
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Let us
first peer inside that vast Islamic world. Many of the largest Muslim
countries in the world show little of this anti-American rage. The
biggest, Indonesia, had, until the recent Asian economic crisis, been
diligently following Washington’s advice on economics, with impressive
results. The second and third most populous Muslim countries, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, have mixed Islam and modernity with some success. While both
countries are impoverished, both have voted a woman into power as prime
minister, before most Western countries have done so. Next is Turkey, the
sixth largest Muslim country in the world, a flawed but functioning
secular democracy and a close ally of the West (being a member of NATO). |
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Only when you get to
the Middle East do you see in lurid colors all the dysfunctions that
people conjure up when they think of Islam today. In Iran, Egypt, Syria,
Iraq, Jordan, the occupied territories and the Persian Gulf, the
resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is virulent, and a raw
anti-Americanism seems to be everywhere. This is the land of suicide
bombers, flag-burners and fiery mullahs. As we strike Afghanistan it is
worth remembering that not a single Afghan has been tied to a terrorist
attack against the United States. Afghanistan is the campground from which
an Arab army is battling America.
 Newsweek On Air: Why they Hate Us
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But even the Arab rage at America is relatively recent. In the
1950s and 1960s it seemed unimaginable that the United States and the Arab
world would end up locked in a cultural clash. Egypt’s most powerful
journalist, Mohamed Heikal, described the mood at the time: “The whole
picture of the United States... was a glamorous one. Britain and France
were fading, hated empires. The Soviet Union was 5,000 miles away and the
ideology of communism was anathema to the Muslim religion. But America had
emerged from World War II richer, more powerful and more appealing than
ever.” I first traveled to the Middle East in the early 1970s, and even
then the image of America was of a glistening, approachable modernity:
fast cars, Hilton hotels and Coca-Cola. Something happened in these lands.
To understand the roots of anti-American rage in the Middle East, we need
to plumb not the past 300 years of history but the past 30.
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© 2001 Newsweek,
Inc.
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