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Hating America
November 23, 2001
Abstract
By Mary H. Cooper
Are U.S. policies too heavy-handed?
The United States has faced international criticism, even condemnation, for actions ranging from the Vietnam War to aid for Israel and
support of globalization. The nation's superpower status and decadent image only intensifies the disapproval. In recent years, however,
anti-U.S. sentiment often has turned violent. Several deadly terrorist attacks by radical Islamic fundamentalists have targeted American citizens
and interests. But the hatred reached a new intensity with the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly
5,000 people and demolishing global symbols of American economic might. Now, even as the United States and its allies seek to destroy
Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, critics are questioning America's sensitivity to the concerns of the Islamic world and beyond.
Protesters burn a U.S. flag in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Oct. 8, after U.S. and British bombers attacked Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan in
retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. (Getty Images/Chris Hondros)
FROM HERE
Overview
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush posed a question that was undoubtedly on the
minds of many stunned Americans. "Why do they hate us?" he asked the nation in an address before Congress.
"They hate what they see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government," he continued. "They hate our freedoms: our
freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." [1]
Hatred of American democracy may help explain what drove 19 young Arab men to turn four commercial airplanes into weapons that
killed themselves and nearly 5,000 innocent people. But many experts suggest deeper motivations as well — from resentment of U.S. policies
in the Middle East to the perception that the American way of life is so offensive to Islam that it must be destroyed.
Still other observers say anti-American hatred has more to with the haters than with America. "They hate us because they are a radical,
utopian and totalitarian movement," says Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia think tank. "Like all such
movements, be it fascism or Marxism-Leninism or this one, we are anathema in every detail and the main obstacle to the achievement of their
goals. In a philosophical and a strategic sense, we are their enemy. So they have declared war on us."
Holding a poster of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, militant Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan, protest on Nov. 7 against the U.S. bombing in
Afghanistan and Pakistan's support of the strikes. AFP Photo/Jewel Samad
But anti-American sentiment is not limited to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network, who have been linked to the attacks.
The initiation of U.S. and British military action in Afghanistan prompted anti-U.S. street demonstrations in the Islamic world from the West
Bank to Indonesia. Many demonstrators waved pictures of bin Laden and burned American flags. Mothers called on their sons to join the holy
war against the United States. [2]Clearly, the roots of such widespread anger extend beyond the delusions of a fringe group of zealots.
Bin Laden himself has cited several reasons for his group's longstanding jihad, or holy war, against the United States. [3]During a taped
address broadcast on Oct. 7 by the Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera, the multimillionaire terrorist listed numerous grievances against
the American "infidels."
Topping bin Laden's list was the stationing of U.S. troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War in his native Saudi Arabia, home to the
Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He called Americans "those killers who have abused the blood, honor and sanctuaries of Muslims."
[4]As non-Muslims, Americans are viewed as infidels, and their presence in Saudi Arabia is considered an offense against Islam. Thus, the
American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia are not seen as the defenders of one Islamic country — Kuwait — from invasion by another
Islamic country — Iraq.
Bin Laden also condemned the United States for its support of international sanctions against Iraq, which were imposed in response to
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and his refusal to allow U.N. inspections of suspected nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons plants. Almost as an afterthought, bin Laden alluded in his Al-Jazeera address to U.S. support of Israel in the half-century-old
Arab-Israeli conflict. He closed by vowing that "neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in
Palestine."
Bin Laden's embrace of the Palestinian cause is widely considered more of a ploy to broaden his support among Muslims than a matter of
great concern to him and his movement of disgruntled, mostly Saudi and Egyptian, nationals. "Bin Laden may not be very concerned about
Israel, but a lot of people who support him are," says Daniel L. Byman, research director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the
Rand Corporation, a Santa Monica, Calf., think tank. "More broadly, however, there is a general sense of resentment at the perceived
humiliation of the Islamic world among certain segments of society. There's a perception that the Islamic community is not respected as it
should be."
Globalization also plays a role in fanning anti-American sentiment by spreading U.S. economic and cultural influence throughout the
world. [5]"If you're poor, and the guy in the next village is poor, that's OK," Byman says. "But with globalization, people tend to compare
themselves with bigger and bigger groups, and if you're in a poor village in Egypt what you see in U.S. television sitcoms are people with a
lot of money."
Making matters worse, the televised image of the United States is often offensive in conservative societies. "When they think of America,
they're not thinking of the land of Thomas Jefferson; they're thinking of the land of Britney Spears and jokes about sexuality on every sitcom
they watch," Byman adds. "They're seeing a very disturbing social order that's quite different from what many of them envision for traditional
society."
Demographic trends merely exacerbate the sense of powerlessness that feeds anti-American sentiment. As a result of rapid population
growth and economic stagnation in recent decades, more than half the population of many Muslim and Arab countries today is under 25, and a
good many are unemployed. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, home to growing militant Islamic movements, universities are turning out more
graduates than the local economies can absorb, adding to unemployment and resentment of repressive governments that receive support from the
United States but do not use the money to relieve the economic suffering of their citizens. [6]
While the street demonstrations against the recent bombing of Afghanistan suggest that many of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims harbor
anger toward the United States, many experts caution that these sentiments fall far short of the homicidal fury directed against this country by
the likes of bin Laden.
An Israeli tank enters the West Bank town of Ramallah on Oct. 18. Israeli forces killed three Palestinians there, including a young girl, a day after
Palestinian militants assassinated Israel's tourism minister. AFP Photo/Menahem Kahana
"There is pervasive anger at the United States, but not pervasive hatred, which is held by only a few in the Middle East, such as Al
Qaeda," says Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution. "That anger is driven by deeply held frustrations in the region
with the existing political and economic order, which they see as oppressive to the majority. And they see America as the anchor of that order."
Counterbalancing that anger, in Telhami's view, is a genuine admiration for the United States and American life in the Muslim world —
which includes 300 million Arabs. "Sure, there are a few who don't like America — the strong traditionalists who reject it on the basis of
cultural values," he says. "But the vast majority of the people like a lot of things about America. They want American visas; they want
American products. Like a spurned girlfriend, they want to win America."
But the carefully tempered statements of support for U.S. military action in Afghanistan by many Arab and Muslim governments suggest
that public opinion toward the United States is ambivalent at best.
As Americans try to understand "9/11" and the motives behind it, these are some of the questions they are asking:
Is Islam incompatible with Western values?
Previously, terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies were executed by Arab and Muslim militants linked to secular
governments and organizations upset with U.S. policies in the Middle East, specifically its support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. [7]But
since the rise of radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorism over the past several decades, the attacks have been accompanied by statements steeped
in religious motivations. Usually they call for a jihad against the Great Satan, as the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran dubbed America
in 1979 when he established the first modern fundamentalist theocracy in the Middle East. [8]
Bin Laden's Oct. 7 statement was similarly laced with religious justifications for killing Americans. "These events have divided the whole
world into two sides — the side of believers and the side of infidels," he said after listing a series of U.S. policies he blamed for the hardship
Muslims suffer today. "May God keep you away from them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious."
Such language and numerous fatwas, or religious edicts, declaring war on the West have prompted many to question whether Islam is
fundamentally at odds with the liberties that inform American and Western values. Mainstream Muslim clerics reject this interpretation out of
hand. For one thing, they note, the essence of jihad in Islamic thought has more to do with an individual's spiritual struggle than with war.
"What the classical jurists of Islam never remotely considered is the kind of unprovoked, unannounced mass slaughter of uninvolved civil
populations that we saw in New York," writes Bernard Lewis, a professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. "For this,
there is no precedent and no authority in Islam. Indeed it is difficult to find precedents even in the rich annals of human wickedness." [9]
Many secular observers of the Middle East also dismiss the notion that religion has anything to do with Islamist — or fundamental
Islamic — terrorism. "I think it is dangerous to talk about religion as causing something," Pipes says. "This religion is 14 centuries old and
has a long history of both war and peace." The key to understanding the place of Islam in current events, Pipes says, lies in understanding its
place in history. "Islam was for the first millennium-plus a religion of the winning team. Whatever index you look at in terms of power or
health or culture, the Muslims were flourishing."
By contrast, Pipes says, "The last two centuries have been a time of great difficulty. The radicalism that one sees in the Muslim world,
including the anti-American variants of it, are in large part attributable to the sense of frustration at not being able to find a solution to current
travail and rage at those who are doing well. So one finds that in the Middle East especially, but also across the Muslim world, there are some
very strong feelings about changing the status quo."
However, democratic institutions are poorly developed in the Arab and Muslim world. There is no centralized institution to forge
consensus on a unified code of Islamic law, which is based on many interpretations of the Koran and the prophet Mohammed's teachings. In
addition, the Muslim world never underwent a movement like the 18th-century Enlightenment in the West, which hastened the demise of
religious influence in government. The lack of the most basic political institutions guaranteeing democratic freedoms leads some scholars to
conclude that Islam and democracy are not compatible.
"Islam is an imperialist religion, more so than Christianity has ever been, and in contrast to Judaism," writes British historian Paul
Johnson, who cites passages in the Koran calling for Muslims to fight pagans until they convert to Islam. He also points to the abuse of basic
human rights in countries that impose Islamic law. "Islam," Johnson concludes, "remains a religion of the Dark Ages." [10]
Some historians see the rise of Islamist terrorism as evidence of a deeper rift among the world's great civilizations, which they say will
color global relations for the foreseeable future. "Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts
of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations," wrote Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard
University in a much-cited 1993 article. "The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics." [11]
But such sweeping conclusions gloss over the real problems of the Arab and Muslim world, in the view of Edward W. Said, a professor of
comparative literature at Columbia University and noted champion of Palestinian self-determination. Viewing the Sept. 11 attacks as evidence
of an inevitable clash between Islam and the West distracts attention from the very real problems of the Middle East, he says
"It is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles
of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or
informed analysis," he writes. "The 'Clash of Civilizations' thesis is a gimmick like 'The War of the Worlds,' better for reinforcing defensive
self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time." [12]
Novelist Salman Rushdie — whose criticism of Islam in Satanic Verses prompted Khomeini to call for his assassination in 1989 — also
rejects the notion that Islamist terrorism is part of a clash of civilizations. "The Islamists' project is turned not only against the West and 'the
Jews' but also against their fellow Islamists," he points out. [13]
Indeed, Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war during the 1980s; the gulf war was sparked by Iraq's brutal invasion of Kuwait; and 1.5 million
people have been killed in the ongoing Afghan civil war, where the radically fundamentalist Taliban movement has tried to wrest control from
fellow Muslims of the Northern Alliance.
Some observers suggest that radical Islamic fundamentalism has emerged as a vehicle for anti-American resentment not because it is
inherently at odds with Western values but because Islam often is the only remaining institution embraced by populations that globalization is
leaving behind.
"Fundamentalism didn't exist before 1970," says George S. Hishmeh, a Christian Palestinian and columnist for several Middle Eastern
newspapers. In his view, Islamist terrorism emerged because of the failure of earlier efforts to build Arab nationalism, launched in the 1950s by
then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
"When Nasser died," Hishmeh says, "there was no way but religion, and that's where fundamentalism came from."
Rand's Byman agrees. "When local regimes are corrupt, there are few economic opportunities, and Islam is one of the few things that
remain relatively pure and respected," he says. "There isn't much else to turn to. It's just a bad combination of a lack of other opportunities, a
resentment of where Islam is in the world today and a very real social change that is occurring that many people feel powerless to stop."
Other experts suggest that Islam is not only compatible with Western values but also that moderate Islam offers the best hope for the
spread of democratic institutions and economic development in the Middle East. Ray Takeyh, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, cites as evidence the election of moderate President Muhammad Khatami in Iran, where the Islamic revolution began in 1979
with the rise to power of Khomeini. "For the Middle East today, moderate Islam may be democracy's last hope," he writes. "For the West, it
might represent one of the best long-term solutions to 'winning' the war against Middle East terrorism." [14]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concurs. "People in the Muslim world who think about it carefully and who understand Islam
understand that their religion has been hijacked and it is not going to be saved by non-Muslims," he said. "Muslims . . . are going to have to
take back their religion and must not allow people to pervert it the way the Al Qaeda leadership is perverting it." [15]
In the final analysis, Rushdie wrote, the Muslim world must depoliticize its religion and restore Islam to the realm of private faith, to
break its link with Islamist terrorists who would use it to fight Western values.
"If terrorism is to be defeated," he wrote, "the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern
is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream." [16]
Would new U.S. policies in the Middle East diminish the threat of terrorism?
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has concentrated on chasing down bin Laden and his supporters from their hideouts in
Afghanistan. Some experts insist that military force is the only responsible option to deal with the attacks and, indeed, with all forms of
terrorism. "Jawboning will not work here," says Pipes of the Middle East Forum. "They have to feel that they've been defeated, and that is
what we have to do. We were attacked, and we have to respond."
But other experts suggest that some American policies that have long inflamed the Muslim world may need to be re-examined,
notwithstanding the fact that President Bush enjoys strong public support for taking the fight to bin Laden. "Crises certainly are opportunities
to think about where we are and who we are," says Telhami of the Brookings Institution. "That doesn't mean we should cave in [to terrorists].
It could even mean we strengthen existing policies. But if we don't at least reflect on our policies at moments like this, then when are we going
to reflect on them?"
Perhaps more than any other issue, U.S. support for Israel — which was carved out of the homeland of millions of Palestinians in 1948
— fuels the deepest Muslim anti-U.S. resentment and frustration. As the single largest recipient of American foreign aid, Israel has used its
roughly $3 billion a year in U.S. military and economic assistance to defend its territory — too aggressively, many say — from attacks by its
Arab neighbors. [17]At the same time, the United States historically has been more involved than any other country in repeatedly trying to
broker peace agreements to resolve the conflict, such as the 1978 Camp David accords between Egytian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli
President Menachem Begin, which paved the way for a subsequent peace agreement ending the 31-year state of war between Egypt and Israel.
Telhami acknowledges that even before Sept. 11, the Bush administration was working with both sides to restart the stalled peace
negotiations. "The United States has an historic commitment to the security of Israel, and I think the body politic in America supports that.
The only question is one of working with Israel and the Palestinians to make them both compromise to reach an agreement that is not only
good for them but for the rest of the region. If you look back, every success story in that relationship has come with an active American role."
However, in the eyes of many Muslims, U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been blatantly one-sided, causing untold suffering and
death among displaced Palestinians while encouraging successive Israeli governments to expropriate territory in flagrant violation of
longstanding agreements. According to a recent Brookings Institution opinion survey in five Middle Eastern countries, 60 to 79 percent of the
respondents cited the plight of Palestinians as the single most important issue to them personally. [18]
"You have to understand," says Telhami, who conducted the survey, "that Arab and Islamic identity in the past half-century has been
intertwined with the issue of Palestine."
However, now is not the time to even discuss changes in U.S. policy toward Israel, according to some observers. After the Sept. 11
attacks, when Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal urged the United States to "adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause," New
York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani pointedly returned the prince's $10 million donation to the city's relief effort. Israel's supporters in
Congress also have rejected any changes in current policy.
"Nothing could further energize extremists, terrorists and fanatics than proof that a massive attack on the United States can force a change
in U.S. policy," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., said in October. [19]
Beyond U.S. support for Israel, bin Laden says the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia affronts Muslims everywhere and justifies
his jihad against the United States. But few experts seriously suggest reconsidering those deployments. For one thing, the United States now
imports more than half its oil, much of it from the Persian Gulf and wants to protect its interests in the region.
But even if the United States were to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil tomorrow, the administration would be unlikely to pull out of
the region. Iraq still poses a threat to its neighbors, 10 years after its defeat in the gulf war and the imposition of harsh economic sanctions on
Iraq. Telhami argues that America's military presence in the region is not so much driven by oil as by the existence of states "perceived to be
extremely hostile," such as Iraq and, to some extent, Iran.
If there is one policy area where the United States could do more to diminish anti-American sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world,
many experts agree, it is in the public-information arena. "We haven't tried to systematically engage Islamic or Arab opinion," Byman says.
"Before Sept. 11, there was a general view that these populations didn't matter much." Because many of these countries are controlled by very
small elites, he adds, "If the people hated America, frankly, we didn't think that it mattered much. Now we realize that it does."
Would increasing U.S. economic aid in the region diminish anti-American sentiment?
The 1990s, a decade of unprecedented economic well-being in the United States, saw a widening of the income gap between rich and poor
countries. "There are about 6 billion people on the Earth today," wrote Strobe Talbott, who served as deputy secretary of State in the Clinton
administration and currently directs the Yale University Center for the Study of Globalization. "About half of them are struggling to survive on
less than $2 a day and have never seen a personal computer or, for that matter, ever made a telephone call." [20]
Poverty pervades most of the Arab and Muslim world, except for a handful of oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.
At the same time, the foreign aid budget of the United States has shrunk over the past 50 years, from a peak of $51 billion (in 1997
dollars) in 1947, at the height of postwar reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan, to around $14 billion by 1997. [21]In addition, the
$15 billion that the United States currently allots in foreign aid is far less as a share of economic output — a mere 0.1 percent of gross national
product — than any other industrial nations provide. [22]
With the current focus on defense policy, the downward trend in foreign aid seems likely to continue. "Programs that are instrumental in
getting at the roots of terrorism are more in jeopardy now than they were two months ago," according to Talbott. "The blank check that
Congress seems willing to write is for enhancing military defenses (including a national anti-missile system), improving intelligence-gathering
and covert action, keeping airlines in business and reinforcing airport and onboard security." [23]
President Bush has promised $320 million in aid to the Afghan people, and began airdropping packets of food to refugees who fled
American bombing raids, literally dropping food aid from some planes while dropping bombs from others. "In order to overcome evil, the great
goodness of America must come forth and shine forth," Bush said on Oct. 4, soon after the bombing got under way, "and one way to do so is
to help the poor souls in Afghanistan."
But critics say that is not enough. Because so much of the animosity toward the United States comes from the Muslim and Arab world,
they call for a massive increase in foreign assistance to those countries and other potential sources of anti-American terrorism.
"The United States and the other industrial nations should launch a global 'Marshall Plan' to provide everyone on Earth with a decent
standard of living," wrote Dick Bell and Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington. [24]
"There is a sad irony in watching the Bush administration's strenuous efforts to build an international coalition," they continued. "There is
no such muscular effort under way in the United States, or in any of the other rich nations, to build a coalition to eradicate hunger, to
immunize all children, to provide clean water, to eradicate infectious disease, to provide adequate jobs, to combat illiteracy or to build decent
housing. The cost of failing to . . . eliminate the fertile ground upon which terrorism thrives is already escalating."
Launching a Muslim Marshall Plan similar to the U.S. economic aid program that helped rebuild post World War II Europe may not
work, however, because the circumstances are so different, say others. Europe was impoverished after the war because its factories and
infrastructure had been destroyed. Islamic countries are poor because of internal economic and political policies that have prevented them from
becoming part of the modern, industrial world, critics say, so money alone won't reverse their poverty.
"It's not as though World War II devastated the Islamic world," says Byman of the Rand Corporation. "The lack of economic growth there
has completely different causes, so dumping a big sack of cash on them is not going to be like fixing the factory that was doing great until it
got bombed."
Some critics reject the notion of providing financial aid as a way to change other societies' behavior. "I don't believe in foreign aid," Pipes
says. "Also, I don't understand why when we get attacked we have to start by doling out money. We have been violated; we have been brutally
attacked. So now we are supposed to respond by appeasing the enemy, opening our wallets and making nice? No. We must figure out who the
enemy is, target him and defeat him."
In any case, development assistance may also be of little use to combat the immediate terrorist threat. Fourteen of the 19 suspects in the
Sept. 11 attacks came from Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the Muslim and Arab world. Most were from middle-class
backgrounds, and some had university degrees, placing them clearly among the "haves" of their native countries.
Like bin Laden, himself a wealthy Saudi native and intimate of the ruling elite until his criticism of government corruption prompted
them to revoke his citizenship, these radical fundamentalists apparently are more concerned with establishing their version of Islamic law in the
world than with improving the lot of the people they claim to represent.
Indeed, says Telhami, it is important to distinguish between the causes of anti-American sentiment and the causes of anti-American
terrorism. "This horror cannot be explained simply by anger in the region; it was a horrible act by very ambitious groups who exploit that
anger," he says.
"The gap between rich and poor countries is a broader problem," he continues, so a simple infusion of economic assistance in the Islamic
world will not be enough. "We should empower the moderates who want a better life and who don't want the militants' world."
To effectively combat terrorism, he says, the entire developed world will have to commit resources to help moderates address the full range
of problems holding back poor countries, including those in the Islamic world. "To the extent that a lot of the resentment toward America is
based on economic disparity and the lack of political participation," he says, "the more we do to give rise to hope on those issues, the more we
will empower the moderates to defeat the militants."
But economic assistance alone will not improve the lot of the poor and disgruntled in the absence of democratic institutions, critics add. A
case in point is Egypt, which has received some $2 billion a year in U.S. foreign aid since signing the peace agreement with Israel in 1979,
making it the second-largest recipient of American largess after Israel. But little of that money ever reaches the needy of that country, whose
government is notorious for corruption and repression of civil liberties.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government criticizes U.S. support for Israel and allows Egyptian commentators to spread rabid, anti-American
messages in government-controlled media — a tactic that has irked American policymakers since Sept. 11.
"While America finds itself at a critical moment in history, so does Egypt," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who condemned Egypt's
belated and tepid disavowal of terrorism after Sept. 11. "It is not acceptable for President [Hosni] Mubarak and his foreign minister to obfuscate
the assault against freedom with their not-so-hidden agenda to propagate Arab hatred against Israel and to muzzle democracy and civil society in
Egypt. . . . If Egypt wants to continue to have United States support, Egypt ought to earn it." [25]
END HERE
Background
Rise of Islam
Many analysts trace Muslim resentment of the United States and the West to the history of Islam itself. In 622 A.D., the last of the three
great monotheistic religions emerged in the Middle East when the prophet Mohammed traveled from his birthplace in Mecca to Medina and
established the first Muslim community. From then until his death in 632, Muslims believe the prophet received revelations from God that
would later become the Koran, Islam's holy book.
Islam built on the traditions and theology of Judaism and Christianity, but proclaimed Mohammed as the last of God's prophets and the
Koran as the true word of God. Over the next 30 years, the new religion spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa and most of the
Spanish peninsula, and eastward to present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Over the next six centuries Islamic civilization reached its pinnacle. While Europe was mired in the intellectual stagnation of the Dark
Ages, science and literature flourished in the Muslim world. Living at the crossroads between Europe and the Far East, Muslim thinkers
borrowed from each civilization to build a vast body of knowledge. They adopted paper from China and philosophy from Greece, and then
introduced their own Arabic numerical system to Europe through their stronghold in Spain. Muslim discoveries in mathematics, astronomy and
medicine, especially from the 10th through the 13th centuries, provided the basis for much of modern science. Muslim societies were among
the most open and tolerant in the world.
But beginning in the 11th century, the Islamic world faced a succession of setbacks that would continue to the present. In 1096, European
Christians launched the first Crusade, invading and occupying much of Islam's heartland in the Holy Land. Three years later, Crusaders
conquered Jerusalem. In much the same way that today's Islamist militants disdain the West, the Crusaders dismissed Muslims as "infidels,"
ruthlessly slaughtered them and tried to crush their religion and culture during the next two centuries of occupation.
In 1291, Islamic forces finally expelled the last of the Crusaders from Palestine. Meanwhile, however, the Muslim world had come under
attack from the east. In 1258, Baghdad, modern Iraq's capital and once a leading Islamic cultural and political center, was sacked by a
descendant of Ghengis Khan, whose Mongol invaders, if anything, proved even more ruthless toward their Muslim subjects than the Crusaders.
Islamic empire-building enjoyed a resurgence under the Muslim Ottoman Turks, who arose from western Anatolia in the 13th century,
conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1453 and went on to occupy much of southeastern Europe. Islam thus
became firmly established in the region, notably in the Balkans, where the battle lines during the wars of the 1990s were often drawn between
Muslim and non-Muslim forces.
But any Islamic designs on Europe were frustrated when Muslim rule in Spain ended with the fall of Granada in 1492. The last major
incursion of Islamic forces into Europe was thwarted in 1683, when the Turks were finally stopped at the gates of Vienna.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Muslims' defeat at Vienna occurred on Sept. 11, the same date as the recent terrorist attacks. "The date
marks the closest that proselytizing Islam ever came to making itself a superpower by military conquest," wrote columnist Christopher
Hitchens. "From then on, Muslim civilization, which once had so much to teach the Christian West, went into a protracted eclipse. I cannot, of
course, be certain, but I think it is highly probable that this is the date that certain anti-modernist forces want us to remember as painfully as
they do." [26]
As the Muslim world suffered repeated setbacks, tolerance began to cede to autocracy as early as the 12th century. The names of such
ruthless military leaders as Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders, and Abdul Mumin, a Moroccan who fought Christian armies in Spain,
inspired fear in medieval Europe. These and other leaders revived religious extremism to legitimize their rule and blamed their more tolerant
predecessors for Islam's worsening plight. The result was a wave of what Iranian scholar Fereydoun Hoveyda called "anti-intellectual rage" in
the Muslim world and growing reliance on the Koran for all political and cultural questions, resulting in what Hoveyda described as
"civilizational suicide." [27]
In this view, the Muslim world has been paralyzed ever since. Conditions worsened in the 18th century, when Western forces once again
conquered the Middle East. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 was followed by European colonization of Algeria and the former Ottoman
lands of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. At the same time, Western societies were incorporating the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers
into democratic political systems that opened the way to the modern world. By the early 20th century, European governments had colonized
most of the Muslim world and drawn boundaries among new nation-states that reflected their own strategic interests, further fueling
anti-Western rage.
Oil and Nationalism
The discovery of vast reserves of oil in the Middle East early in the 20th century raised the ambitions of Europe and the United States in
the region. Under the control of British and other European colonial powers, the Persian Gulf's known reserves of oil were easy to obtain:
European and American oil companies simply drilled and extracted oil for export back home, pocketing most of the profits. [28]
In 1948, soon after World War II, the West again intervened in the region by helping establish the state of Israel. To make way for Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust in Europe, the new state was carved out of the Holy Land from which their ancestors had been forced to flee
centuries earlier. But the same territory was also home to millions of Muslim Palestinians, many of whom were displaced by the new Israeli
government. That action was to galvanize anti-Israeli, and anti-Western, sentiment throughout the Middle East and set the stage for an
Arab-Israeli conflict that continues to this day.
Israel's founding also gave further impetus to the new, pan-Arab nationalist movement led by Egypt's Nasser. The secular movement
aimed to replace the myriad nation-states carved out by the colonial powers with a single country incorporating all the Arabic-speaking, Muslim
countries from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. During the 1950s, when Nasser consolidated his power, Egypt was the undisputed leader of the
Arab world. Muslims throughout the region looked to its secular political approach as their path to political development.
The region's main economic strength lay in the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. By the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia and other regional
producers had largely nationalized their oilfields and formed an effective cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Beginning with the 1973 oil embargo against the United States in retaliation for its support of Israel, OPEC imposed a series of oil-price hikes
that sparked an energy crisis in the United States and a global recession. Oil's effectiveness as a negotiating tool grew progressively weaker,
however, as the United States and other industrialized countries found alternative sources of oil. [29]
In any case, the oil profits that had filled the coffers of Middle Eastern rulers failed to improve the lot of most people in the Arab world.
"The oil money in the '70s gave the illusion that power had come to the Islamic world," said novelist V.S. Naipul, winner of this year's Nobel
Prize for literature. "It was as though up there was a divine supermarket, and at last it had become open to people in the Muslim world. They
didn't understand that the goods that gave them power in the end were made by another civilization. That was intolerable to accept, and it
remains intolerable." [30]
Meanwhile, Nasser's pan-Arab political vision faded after Israel, backed by the United States, repelled Egyptian-led Arab invasions in 1967
and 1973, and subsequently occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza that it has yet to relinquish. Since secular pan-Arabism
had failed to win one of its central goals, frustrated Muslims began to look for leadership in the one institution that united them all — Islam.
Meanwhile, Egypt became home to the first major political organization to embrace radical fundamentalist Islam — the Muslim
Brotherhood. Founded in 1928, the brotherhood rejected pan-Arabism as a corrupt, Western model of social organization. For the brotherhood,
the only acceptable form of government for Muslim societies was a theocracy based on Sharia, or Islamic law. Although Egypt violently
suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement it sparked spread beyond Egypt's borders.
A turning point in the advance of the fundamentalist Islamic movement came in the stunning events of 1979. In January, Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, despised as a corrupt puppet of the U.S. government, left the country for an "extended vacation" just weeks before
the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to establish the first officially Islamic government in modern history. In March, Nasser's successor,
Sadat, signed a peace agreement with Israel, an act that led to his assassination two years later by militants linked to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an
offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. On November 4, Islamic fundamentalists stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American
diplomats hostage, a crisis that dragged on for more than a year and set the stage for President Jimmy Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan in
1980. And in December, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, sparking a war that would last for 10 years before the mujahedin — fundamentalist
Islamic guerrillas aided at the time by both the U.S. and bin Laden — pushed them out.
Imbued with Cold War reasoning, President Reagan dubbed the Afghan mujahedin as "freedom fighters," little knowing that they would
draw the United States into a different kind of war 22 years later — a war in which bin Laden would also play a key role.
Gulf War's Impact
Arab hopes of achieving Nasser's dream finally evaporated in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait. Up to that time,
the Arab and Muslim world was united in its condemnation of Israel and U.S. Mideast policies. But the invasion of one Muslim country by
another and the armed intervention of the United States at the invitation of Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states divided public opinion. The
U.S. intervention was supported by Saudi Arabia, still the dominant economic power in the Muslim world, and other governments in the
region that feared Iraq's destabilizing influence.
But to radical fundamentalists, the 1991 war offered further evidence that the United States was bent on destroying Islam and that the
regimes hosting U.S. forces were irredeemably corrupt.
The imposition of economic sanctions against Iraq for invading Kuwait and blocking United Nations inspections of suspected Iraqi
stockpiles of nuclear and biochemical weapons further enraged Islamists and their sympathizers in the Muslim world. In their view, the
sanctions were not an effort to force a ruthless dictator to give up devastating weapons but an unjustified intrusion into Iraq's domestic affairs
that caused untold suffering among Iraqi civilians.
Under a U.N.-administered "oil-for-food" sanctions regime, Iraq is allowed to export limited shipments of oil as long as it uses the
revenues to buy food and medicines. But little of the money has reached Iraq's needy, and as many as 500,000 children have died from
malnutrition and lack of adequate health care, according to the U.N. [31]
Bin Laden denounced his government for allowing American troops into Saudi Arabia during the war and was subsequently stripped of his
citizenship, in 1994.
In the early 1980s, bin Laden and thousands of other militants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Muslim countries had gone to
Afghanistan to help U.S.-backed combatants in a 10-year struggle to eject Soviet invaders. He brought money, weapons and manpower to the
Afghan conflict, which succeeded in expelling the Soviets in 1989. He later helped fund Taliban efforts to wrest control of much of Afghanistan
from the less-radical mujahedin.
While in Afghanistan, bin Laden also joined forces with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the militant group that had assassinated Sadat.
Together they formed the Al Qaeda network to spread global jihad against the West.
In 1996, bin Laden issued his first fatwa against the United States and its Middle Eastern allies, and his newly formed Al Qaeda network
began a series of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests abroad, including the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, last fall's bombing
of the USS Cole in Yemen, and, presumably, the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. soil.
Bin Laden has found support for his cause among a small but diverse segment of Muslims. Many come from middle-class backgrounds
and have studied at universities at home and abroad. But in Afghanistan the vast majority of guerrillas supporting Al Qaeda and its Taliban
protectors are impoverished young men, many of them orphaned during two decades of war. After fleeing to neighboring Pakistan, these boys
were trained in religious schools, called madrassas, funded largely by Saudi Arabia. There they were steeped in the radical Islamic view of the
world and trained to join the anti-U.S. jihad. [32]
Current Situation
Shifting Allegiances
The first nine months of the Bush administration witnessed a growing rift between the United States and its European allies as the new
president disavowed several widely supported international treaties, including the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming, the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Dismayed critics worried that the United States had embarked on
an increasingly unilateralist path. [33]
Sept. 11 changed all that. All the European allies quickly put aside their differences with Bush and expressed solidarity with U.S. efforts
to hunt down the terrorists. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who led the diplomatic effort to gain international support for the bombing
campaign before it was launched Oct. 7, explained how the attacks had shifted the course of international relations. "Nobody's calling us
unilateralist in the last few weeks," he said in late October. [34]
In fact, Powell delivered a major address on the Middle East on Nov. 19, in which he underscored U.S. support for a Palestinian state and
signaled more intensive U.S. involvement to end fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.
Britain emerged as the most vocal supporter of the United States in the wake of the attacks and the first ally to commit troops to the
military campaign in Afghanistan. But even countries where skepticism of U.S. policies runs deep displayed unequivocal solidarity with the
United States. President Jacques Chirac of France, which pulled out of NATO's military structure in the 1960s over disagreement with U.S.
policies, declared, "The solidarity between our two countries must be expressed with force as well as sympathy." [35]
Even in Italy, where criticism of American policies has enjoyed a large and vocal following since the Vietnam War, thousands of
American-flag-waving demonstrators answered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's call for a rally in support of the U.S. war effort on Nov. 10.
The attacks also have sparked a warming trend in U.S.-Russia relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leading critic of Bush's plan
to abandon the ABM Treaty and begin construction of a national missile defense system, was among the first and strongest supporters of the
administration's call to launch an international war on terrorism. After Putin visited the United States barely two months after the attacks, the
United States and Russia appeared likely to agree to unprecedented arms control measures to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals over the
next decade and increase military and counterterrorism cooperation.
Indeed, the most vocal critics of U.S. policies seemed lost for words in the aftermath of the attacks. Anti-globalization demonstrators, who
had regularly interrupted international economic meetings with large street protests for the past two years, canceled a scheduled demonstration
in late September.
"There is a bit of a retreat among anti-globalization types because this attack came from a source that is so alien to them they don't exactly
want to associate with it," says Pipes of the Middle East Forum. "They have nothing in common with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the like, so
they are adopting a more cautious approach now."
Limited Support
Support in the Muslim and Arab world for the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks was somewhat ambivalent.
Television images showed protesters carrying pro-bin Laden posters and burning American flags in street demonstrations from Palestine to
Indonesia. Muslim and Arab governments, on the other hand, were nearly unanimous in their condemnation of the attacks. Pakistan's president,
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, went so far as to commit full support to the U.S. mission to capture or kill bin Laden and oust the Taliban from
neighboring Afghanistan.
But other governments in the region have been less supportive of the U.S. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is allowing the Pentagon to direct
its military campaign in Afghanistan from a command post near the capital of Riyahd, but it has been accused of dragging its feet in Bush's
effort to freeze money flowing to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and not providing information on the 14 Saudi suspects linked to the attacks. [36]
Some Muslim leaders have expressed dismay at the attacks while emphasizing the need to address what they say are terrorism's root
causes. Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, called the attacks "unprecedented and almost beyond our imagining." But in a
pointed reference to the plight of Palestinians, he went on to say, "We need to have a clear definition of terrorism and distinguish between this
phenomenon, which is based on criminal practices and attacks against civilian and innocent people, and legitimate struggles to get rid of the
yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation." [37]
Such official Arab ambivalence reflects the ruling elites' fear of Islamist violence at home. "It's hard for a regime to crack down on Islam
because it would risk losing its legitimacy if it really disrupted Islamist networks," says Byman of the Rand Corporation. One of the few
governments that have done so, he says, is Iraq. "The Iraqis shot half the clerical leadership of Iraq, but the Iraqi regime is no longer legitimate.
The people hate it, and it maintains power by killing large numbers of people. Regimes that want to avoid that have to make a deal with
religion."
The current terrorism crisis also has emboldened some prominent scholars in the Arab-Muslim world. They want Muslims to stop
blaming the United States for their problems and accept responsibility for their tolerance of non-democratic governments, economic stagnation
and injustice in the Middle East.
"The Lebanese civil war was not an American creation; neither was the Iran-Iraq War; neither was bin Laden," said Shafeeq Ghabra, a
Kuwaiti political scientist. "These are our creations. We cannot be in this blame-others mode forever." [38]
Outlook
More Haters?
The extraordinary show of international solidarity for the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks may be short-lived. The
U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has resulted inevitably in civilian casualties in a country that
already has suffered more than two decades of war and now faces famine as well.
The most vocal criticism of the U.S. military action is coming from Muslim countries. "The world has yet to overcome the horror and
disbelief caused by the malicious terrorist attacks of the 11th of September against thousands of innocent people," said President Mohammad
Khatami of Iran, "while the most destructive and modern weapons are being used in one of the most deprived parts of the world and against an
oppressed and dispossessed people. Once again history repeats its sad experience that war triggers war." [39]
The best antidote to flagging support for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign would be a rapid halt of all hostilities in
Afghanistan, which appeared to be within grasp by week's end. But the Taliban's speedy retreat from most of its strongholds in Afghanistan
may not signal an end to U.S. involvement in that country anytime soon. "This war is really a war to end terrorism on Afghanistan's soil," said
Bush National Security Adviser Condeleeza Rice. "This may take a while." [40]
Complicating matters for the United States, and its image in the Islamic world, is the need for stability in a country that has known only
chaos for more than a decade. The next step in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan is to promote the installation of a government that enjoys
enough support to prevent the conditions of anarchy that permitted the Taliban to take power in the first place.
The trick for the United States, widely criticized for propping up unpopular governments in much of the Middle East, is to promote this
process without appearing to be calling the shots in the eyes of Islamic public opinion. "We are not trying in the United States to impose a
solution on Afghanistan," Rice said. "Anyone who has supported this regime in the way that the leadership and their hard-core fighters have,
it's hard to imagine them being part of any follow-on government."
But perhaps the biggest challenge for the United States in its effort to dampen the hatred that fuels anti-American terrorism may lie beyond
the influence of the world's sole remaining superpower. In thousands of madrassas, or religious schools, in the Middle East and Central Asia
children are being taught little but the need to carry out holy war against the West. "The madrassas are virulently anti-American," said Jerrold
Post, a terrorism analyst for the CIA. "Here [bin Laden] is preaching to a ready-made group. By age 8, 9, 10, they are already shouting 'jihad,
death to America.' " [41]
Support for radical fundamentalist Islam and its rejection of everything Western or non-Islamic is not confined to the uneducated poor.
Indeed, Islamist militancy enjoys a robust following in some of the Muslim world's wealthiest countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Even in
Kuwait, the country the United States defended during the gulf war a mere 10 years ago, anti-American sentiment is strong. The country's
ruling emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, who barely escaped an assassination attempt by fundamentalist Muslims in 1995, is struggling
to fend off a challenge from a growing Islamist faction that wants to replace the country's westernized institutions with Islamic law.
Even if international support for the United States survives long enough to reach the immediate objective of capturing or killing bin Laden
and his supporters, driving the Taliban from power and promoting a stable Afghanistan, many analysts doubt the coalition would survive any
escalation of the war on terrorism. Some Pentagon officials and legislators already are calling on the United States to go after state sponsors of
terrorism, notably Iraq. The United States should be "unflinching in our determination to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq before
he, emboldened by Sept. 11, strikes at us with weapons of mass destruction," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., a leading proponent of
expanding the war on terrorism. [42]
The administration has also hinted that it could go after terrorist strongholds in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and the Philippines,
and possibly in some East African countries.
If the administration decides to take such a step, analysts say, it should be prepared to go it alone and see a return of anti-American
sentiment abroad. "Most people understand that the United States has a right to self-defense, that what the United States faced is a horrible
attack by a horrible group," says Telhami of the Brookings Institution.
"What people are fearing is what happens next," he continues. "They fear that this is just a prelude to attack on other Arab and Muslim
countries. If we go in that direction, then we're going to be facing a lot more trouble than we're facing today."
Footnotes
[1] Bush addressed the nation Sept. 20, 2001.
[2] See Joseph Lelyveld, "All Suicide Bombers Are Not Alike," The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 28, 2001, pp. 48-79.
[3] For background on bin Laden and other terrorist organizations, see David Masci and Kenneth Jost, "War on Terrorism," The CQ Researcher, Oct. 12,
2001, pp. 817-848; and Mary H. Cooper, "Combating Terrorism," The CQ Researcher, July 21, 1995, pp. 633-656.
[4] From a videotaped address broadcast on Oct. 7, 2001.
[5] For background, see Brian Hansen, "Globalization Backlash," The CQ Researcher, Sept. 28, 2001, pp. 761-784.
[6] See "Atta's Odyssey," Time, Oct. 8, 2001.
[7] See U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000, April 2001.
[8] For background, see David Masci, "Islamic Fundamentalism," The CQ Researcher, March 24, 2000, pp. 241-256.
[9] Bernard Lewis, "Islam and the West: Jihad vs. Crusade," The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 28, 2001.
[10] Paul Johnson, "Militant Islam," National Review, Oct. 1, 2001.
[11] Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, summer 1993.
[12] Edward W. Said, "The Clash of Ignorance," The Nation, Oct. 22, 2001.
[13] Salman Rushdie, "Yes, This Is About Islam," The New York Times, Nov. 2, 2001.
[14] Ray Takeyh, "Faith-Based Initiatives," Foreign Policy, November/December 2001, p. 68. For background, see David Masci, "Reform in Iran," The
CQ Researcher, Dec. 18, 1998, pp. 1097-1120.
[15] "Rumsfeld: As World Changes, So Must USA," USA Today, Oct. 25, 2001.
[16] Rushdie, op. cit.
[17] For background, see David Masci, "Middle East Conflict," The CQ Researcher, April 6, 2001, pp. 273-296.
[18] See Shibley Telhami, "Sympathy for the Palestinians," The Washington Post, July 25, 2001.
[19] Ackerman spoke at an Oct. 17, 2001, hearing held by the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.
[20] Strobe Talbott, "The Other Evil," Foreign Policy, November/December 2001, p. 75.
[21] Congressional Budget Office, "The Role of Foreign Aid in Development," May 1997.
[22] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "Development Assistance Committee Announces ODA Figures for 2000," April 23,
2001.
[23] Talbott, op. cit., p. 76.
[24] Dick Bell and Michael Renner, "A New Marshal Plan? Advancing Human Security and Controlling Terrorism," Worldwatch Institute, Oct. 9, 2001.
[25] From a Senate floor speech, Oct. 24, 2001.
[26] Christopher Hitchens, "Blaming bin Laden First," The Nation, Oct. 22, 2001.
[27] Quoted by Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (2001), p. xi.
[28] For background on Western involvement in Middle Eastern oil, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize (1991).
[29] For background, see Mary H. Cooper, "Energy Policy," The CQ Researcher, May 25, 2001, pp. 441-464.
[30] From an interview with Adam Shatz, "Literary Criticism," The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 28, 2001, p. 19.
[31] UNICEF, "The Impact of Sanctions: A Study of UNICEF's Perspective," February 1998.
[32] See Rick Bragg, "Shaping Young Islamic Hearts and Hatreds," The New York Times, Oct. 14, 2001.
[33] For background, see Mary H. Cooper, "Transatlantic Tensions," The CQ Researcher, July 13, 2001, pp. 553-576; and Mary H. Cooper, "Bush's
Defense Strategy," The CQ Researcher, Sept. 7, 2001, pp. 689-712.
[34] Powell testified Oct. 24, 2001, before the House International Relations Committee.
[35] From a Sept. 17 speech in Paris, cited in "Avec autant de force que de coeur," Le Monde, Sept. 18, 2001.
[36] Alan Sipress and John Mintz, "U.S. to Press for Saudi Aid In Tracking Down Suspects," The Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2001.
[37] From a Nov. 10 address to the U.N. General Assembly, quoted in Serge Schmemann, "Leaders Seek to Discern Root Causes of Violence," The New
York Times, Nov. 11, 2001.
[38] Speaking on Al-Jazeera TV, and quoted by Thomas L. Friedman, "Fighting bin Ladenism," The New York Times, Nov. 6., 2001.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Interviewed on NBC's Meet the Press, Nov. 18, 2001.