Grievances over the U.S.A's Policy in the Middle East combined
with Islamist triumphalism make a toxic mixture.
The reasons are complex and rooted in history . The
proximate source of this brand of hatred toward America is U.S Foreign Policy
in the Middle East.
This hatred is also due to another element. That element is
the idea that the U.S.A are not just the enemy of the Arabs or even the Muslims
but also the enemy of God. It is an idea encouraged by Ayatullah Khomeini who
proclaimed the U.S.A « the Great Satan » spread by Islamic
extremists throughout the Arab world. Animosity toward the U.S.A in the Middle
East can be plotted through concentric circles. In the white-hot core are
violent ideologues like Bin Laden, and his acolytes. Then come Arab radicals,
including both Islamic fundamentalists and secular nationalists who are
desperate and angry enough to have danced in the streets upon hearing the news
of September 11th . But the distaste also extends to large numbers
of temperate Arabs who were quietly pleased to see American arrogance taken
down a notch.
Certainly the greatest source of Arab displeasure with the
U.S.A is their support to Israel politically, economicaly, militarily. To a
majority of Arabs, Israel is an oppressor of Arab rights. To Islamic fanatics,
including Bin Laden, Israel is a State to be destroyed.
For Bin Laden the real Casus belli is the U.S troops' presence
in his country dating to the military build up before the 1991 Gulf war
precipitated by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. To Bin Laden, as well as
many non-radical Muslims, the presence of infidel soldiers in the Homeland of
the Prophet Muhammad is a sacrilege. His first goal is to compel U.S.A to
withdraw its military forces from its native Saudi Arabia. For Bin Laden the
Saudi regime is responsible for their presence.
Another grievance is the fact that the U.S.A have done little
to stop Russia's savage war against separatist Muslim in Chechnya.
Many Arabs and Muslims feel they had ten centuries of great
cultural achievement that ended with European colonialism. Now they feel
impotent. They feel they are under siege from the modern world. The U.S.A
symbolize this world. The West, they feel, look at them as backward and is only
interested in their oil. Their sense of self-worth and identity is wounded.
Islam is perfect and its practioners have strayed from the
fundamentalists of the faith. This notion gained increasing currency after
1979. Khomeini called Muslims to violence to conquer « the land of
infidels ».The Egyptian writer Abd al-salam Faray wrote a pamphlet
called « The neglected duty » in which he argued that holy
war was necessary to defend Muslims' dignity. Bin Laden has come to fulfil the
neglected duty. He fancies himself the Muslim commander who liberated Jerusalem
from the crusaders. « Islam is the solution » is the slogan
of the Islamic movement : it is the triumphalist religious convictions of
Bin Laden that make him and his followers so dangerous. Most governments feel
threatened by the rise of subnational forces like Al Qaeda24(*), and must now devise a
strategy to deal with this form of religious terrorism.
Beyond the U.S.A's presence in Afghanistan, it is their
perception of the world and their self-centredness that is responsible for the
events of the attacks of September 11th . The Manifest Destiny came
to encompass the American belief in the U.S.A. Special duty to lead other
peoples, they also have the sense that they had a unique mission to set an
example for the rest of the world, to export American freedom and
democracy ; that sense of mission was applied in the early 20th
to the whole world by Woodrow Wilson. The Americans do not know how to be
second, or even first among equals. They only know how to be the best.
The ill-effects of U.S-led globalization, and imbalances in
economic development between North and South directly fuel the fires of
anti-Americanism, deepens crises in the Muslim World and creates angry young
suicide bombers and hijackers willing to lay down their lives to hit the Mecca
of capitalism, the World Trade Center. Peaceful reordering and change of
economic inequities between have and have not nations is not feasible. Hence,
poverty and frustration in the Third world feeds in terrorism. War on terrorism
must include a war against poverty
