DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: THE UMMAHS HATE FOR THE UNITED STATES

Convenient Muslim memories
by Rick Martinez, Correspondent

Count me as one of the suckers who bought the notion that unleashing democracy in the Middle East will enhance U.S. security and that increased civil and personal freedom will ultimately defeat terrorism.

I no longer believe it. Regrettably, I've concluded that democracy and Islam are anchored in incompatible world-views.

Today Turkey, widely regarded as the leading democratic Muslim nation, is a republic held together by a military that has signaled it won't be bashful to overthrow any government that hints of an allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism. Turkey teaches us that democracy, as we know it, in an Islamic society may be possible only at the point of a gun.

Democracy and self-rule will continue to be elusive as long as Islamic clerics, scholars and, in Arab lands, leaders wallow in what Dominque Moisi describes as a culture of humiliation. The deputy director of the French Institute of International Relations defines this culture as the Muslim world's propensity to blame its decline on imperialism and colonialism imposed by the Christian West, particularly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The creation of Israel after World War II only worsened this culture of humiliation by transforming it into one filled and fueled by hatred.

If Moisi's view is correct -- and I think it is -- it is then unrealistic for the United States to expect meaningful peace from Muslim countries that propagate historically entrenched hate as part of their national identity. Moisi's realistic interpretation of Islam's political world-view explains why the failure of a two-state-solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about the mere existence of Israel, not the establishment of an independent Palestine.

Cultural hatred may also be responsible for the inexplicable lack of logic espoused by some Muslims with regard to terrorism. In a recent Pew Research Center survey of people it described as American Muslims who are generally happy, assimilated and moderate in their beliefs, an astonishing 28 percent refuse to believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Another 32 percent said they didn't know, or declined to answer a question about who carried out the attacks despite well-documented evidence and al-Qaeda's claims of responsibility.

This level of self-delusion shocked me, but it's moderate by world standards. While finesse has never been the strong suit of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, there's no denying that President Bush liberated 50 million Muslims from the tyrannies of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was President Clinton who stopped the genocide against Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs in 1995. And it was President George H.W. Bush who stopped Saddam's pillaging of fellow Muslims in Kuwait in 1991.

Yet many Muslims conveniently forget this recent history of liberation and protection by the West -- ironic, given that Islamic culture readily recalls atrocities perpetrated on it reaching far back in history.
I fear that political correctness may be shielding the public and policymakers from the level of antipathy the Islamic world really has for the West, and for the United States in particular. Steven Kull, who tracks Muslim public opinion for the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, regularly testifies before Congress. Little of his testimony is encouraging. According to Kull, overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia believe it's the goal of the U.S. to weaken and divide Islam and spread Christianity. Only small minorities in these countries believe we're conducting the war on terror for self-protection.

Conventional wisdom on the Arab street is that the real agenda for the war on terror is political and military domination of Middle East resources. These findings can be found in an April 2007 study issued by WorldPublicOpinion.org.

To me, the most discouraging conclusion in the report is that Egyptians generally hold the most anti-American, anti-Western views, even though Egypt gets approximately $2 billion per year of U.S. foreign aid, a sum traditionally just behind aid to Israel and, recently, Iraq.

These are hard truths to accept, given the price America has paid in money, diplomacy and lives in the Middle East. But they are facts I will remember the next time my president wants to put Americans in harm's way in pursuit of economic freedom and social justice in a Muslim society.



Pertinent Links:

1) Convenient Muslim memories