September 11, Islam, and a
history of hatred
September 16 2002
Muslim frustration and anger, building for centuries, have
reached a climax in our time, writes Bernard Lewis.
The immediate, general reaction as the facts of what happened on
September 11, 2001, became known was one of utter
astonishment. Most people in the Western world find it
impossible to understand the motives and purposes that drove the
perpetrators of these crimes, those who sent them and those who
applauded them with song and dance in the streets.
Why would anyone be willing to sacrifice his own life to
accomplish the random slaughter of other people selected merely
by the place where they happen to be, irrespective of age, sex,
nationality and religion?
This indifference to the suffering of others, even of their own
people, is a common feature not of Islam as a religion but of these
terrorist movements and of the regimes that use them. The motive,
clearly, is hatred, and from then until now the question is being
asked, with urgency and bewilderment: "Why do they hate us
Americans so?"
At one level the answer is obvious. It is difficult if not impossible
to be strong and successful and to be loved by those who are
neither. The same kind of envious rancour can sometimes be seen
in Europe, where attitudes to the US are often distorted by the
feeling of having been overtaken, surpassed and in a sense
superseded by the upstart society in the West. This feeling, with
far deeper roots and greater intensity, affects attitudes in the
Muslim world towards the Western world or, as they would put it,
the infidel countries and societies that now dominate the world.
Most Muslims, unlike most Americans, have an intense historical
awareness and see current events in a much deeper and broader
perspective than Westerners normally do. And what they see is,
for them, profoundly tragic.
For many centuries Islam was the greatest civilisation on earth -
the richest, the most powerful, the most creative in every
significant field of human endeavour. Its armies, its teachers and
its traders were advancing on every front in Asia, in Africa, in
Europe, bringing, as they saw it, civilisation and religion to the
infidel barbarians who lived beyond the Muslim frontier.
And then everything changed, and Muslims, instead of invading
and dominating Christendom, were invaded and dominated by
Christian powers. The resulting frustration and anger at what
seemed to them a reversal of both natural and divine law have
been growing for centuries, and have reached a climax in our own
time. These feelings find expression in many places where
Muslims and non-Muslims meet and clash - in Bosnia and
Kosovo, Chechnya, Israel and Palestine, Sudan, Kashmir and the
Philippines, among others.
The prime target of the resulting anger is, inevitably, the US, now
the unchallenged leader of what we like to call the free world and
what others variously define as the West, Christendom and the
world of the unbelievers.
For a long time politicians in Arab and some other Third World
countries were able to achieve at least some of their purposes by
playing the rival outside powers against one another - France
against Britain, the Axis (German, Italy, and Japan up to WWII)
against the Allies, the Soviet Union against the US. And then,
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, came a truly radical change.
Now, for the first time, there is only one superpower, dominant,
however unwillingly, in the world: the United States.
Some Arab leaders try frantically to find a substitute for the Soviet
Union as patron and protector of anti-American causes. Others,
notably Osama bin Laden, took a different view. As they saw it, it
was they who, by the holy war they waged in Afghanistan, brought
about the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union. From their
perspective, they had dealt with one of the infidel superpowers -
the more determined, the more ruthless, the more dangerous of the
two. Dealing with the soft and pampered US would, so it seemed,
be a much easier task.
The reasons for hatred are known and historically attested; the
hatred has been growing steadily for many years and has been
intensified by the conduct of some of the rulers whom America
calls friends and allies and whom their own people see and resent
as American puppets. A more important question is the reason for
the contempt with which they regard the US. The basic reason for
this contempt is what they perceive as the rampant immorality and
degeneracy of the American way - contemptible but also
dangerous, because of its corrupting influence on Muslim
societies. What did the Ayatollah Khomeini mean when he
repeatedly called America the "Great Satan"? The answer is clear.
Satan is not an invader, an imperialist, an exploiter. He is a
tempter, a seducer, who, in the words of the Koran, "whispers in
the hearts of men".
Another aspect of this contempt is expressed again and again in
the statements of bin Laden and others like him. The refrain is
always the same. Because of their depraved and self-indulgent
way of life, Americans have become soft and cannot take
casualties. And then they repeat the same litany - Vietnam, the
Marines in Beirut, Somalia. Hit them and they will run. More
recent attacks confirmed this judgment in their eyes - on the
World Trade Centre in New York in 1993; on the US mission in
Riyadh in 1995; on the military living quarters in Khobar in Saudi
Arabia in 1996; the embassies in East Africa in 1998; on the USS
Cole in Yemen in October, 2000 - all those brought only angry but
empty words and, at most, a few misdirected missiles.
The immediate and effective response against their bases in
Afghanistan must have come as a serious shock to the terrorist
organisations and compelled some revision of their earlier
assessment of American weakness and demoralisation. The US
must make sure they are not misled, by the unfamiliar processes
of a democratic society, to return to that earlier misjudgment.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/11/1031608270449.
html
Bernard Lewis is professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at
Princeton University. His most recent book is What Went Wrong?
Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. This article first
appeared in The Washington Post.
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