Why Do They Hate Us
I found this write up over on FAL Files in this thread. This is a very long and very interesting read.
Why they hate us
A cultural perspective from the Arab Street
By Robert Price Guthrie
Dhahran Saudi Arabia September 11
I was standing in the yard of a friend’s house when he told me that I wouldn’t believe what happened on the news. I arrived in front of the television set just in time to see the second plane fly into the other tower. At first I was stunned, shocked and then I became extremely angry. I was outraged. I had been living and working in this country for some time now. I will tell you that it took extreme willpower to continue working at the job I held at that time. September 11 changed my life instantly and drastically. A year has gone by now and though my anger has grown less intense it doesn’t fade away. I have many questions about the attacks. Decent people everywhere have bought many books on Islam in an attempt to understand the problem of World Islam. Islamists here have noticed and proudly report that a great many Westerners are turning to their religion! The spectacular media grabbing show isn’t over. Australia lost around two hundred of her citizens in Bali to a series of bombs let off simultaneously. Moscow suffered another terrorist plot only this time in a theater full of people. Over 150 of her culture loving citizens died in the government’s attempt to take out the Chechen terrorists. While these events are disturbing enough what is even more so to me is that my students, and indeed my Arab Muslim co teachers think that attackers of the innocent in both Bali and Moscow are heroes! One Egyptian Muslim wanted to know if there was anyway that the people of my country might possibly think that the Islamic terrorists were on their side! I was recently told by one of my Co-workers that my president was a terrorist, and that all of the modern presidents of the United States were terrorists also! I have spent many hours writing and reflecting on what I have seen here in the Middle East and what I have observed concerning their values, their religion and their way of life deeply trouble me. Fifteen of the Hisb Allah heroes who flew those planes into the World Trade Towers were Saudis. Their government states that it is the Islam in Afghanistan that influenced them to do such horrible acts, but they fail to tell the world the rest of the story. The Taliban themselves are products of the extremists Wahabi sect that is now dominant in Saudi Arabia. The Wahabbis, like the Taliban, are dedicated to widening the boundaries of Dar ul Islam until there are no other lands but Islam and they are not alone.
Introduction:
That World Islam hates the West cannot be denied now in this turbulent time of history. Why they hate us is now more the question. Finding concrete answers to that question can be compared to nailing Jell-O to the wall. In order to understand the second statement we need to define some terms that Euro-America finds confusing. World Islam and the West are two very different civilizations with two opposite worldviews, and although they share the same globe, they might as well be living on different planets. World Islam understands the secular mindset very little and the same could be said of the Euro-America when it comes to understanding World Islam. Westerners have been over here in the Middle East for over seventy years, and we still don’t understand the Bedouin world which formed his society, culture and religion. Islam is a composite of all three. It is not simply a religion in the strictest sense of the word, but a Politico-religio system that resembles in many ways the Fascism that the free world relieved Europe from over sixty years ago. Islam does not mean peace, as some would have you believe. When the Islamists use the word Peace they use doublespeak. A more accurate definition of that word means to submit. A Non-Muslim would have peace only when he submits to World Islam. Non Muslim cultures and civilizations do not have the right to peace but war. Right now as I am writing there is war of another kind being fought in our western courts. Mohammedans are suing the U.S. government because they feel that their rights to practice their religion have been abrogated. They have been singled out so they feel and have been trampled on since the September 11 terrorist attacks. They have a right to sue the government. They have a right to free speech. They have a right to propagate their religion, but those rights do not include acts of Jihadist Islam. What is Jihadist Islam? I found that both my personal experiences here in the Middle East, and study of materials put out by government funded Islamists groups helped me immensely in my personal understanding of this phenomenon that the world finds itself confused over.
Jihad and World Islam:
Ten years ago I was playing soccer with Saudi Students in the United States. A group of Black American Muslims gathered near where we were and began to pray toward the east while my Saudi friends all continued to play soccer. Afterwards one of the black teenagers came over to us and talked among his fellow Muslims. During his discussion with the Saudis he shot a look of venomous hate toward me the only Non-Muslim in that area of the park. That disturbed me then. Years later I find myself in the middle of the Saudi world and now I know something about the Islamic aspect of that American teenager’s worldview. His world is called “Dar ul Sallam” -world of peace, and according to what he is taught, my world is known as “Dar ul Harb” better known as the world of war or struggle. Once Jihadist revolutionaries overthrow the non-Islamic government of the United States, forcibly convert all who have yet to call Mohamed their prophet they will then establish the new land as being inside, or a part of Dar ul Sallam. In Islam a great distinction is made by these two worlds. The Green Flag of the country where I work has a white sword and a phrase in Arabic above it:
“La Illa Alla, Mohamed Rasul Alla.”
“THERE ARE NO GODS BUT GOD, AND MOHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET.”
This statement and sword are not together by coincidence. They have belonged hand in hand throughout the many centuries since the inception of this desert religion of Islam.
I have read much material here that help to explain those two being together. One of the booklets that I find most useful is written by Mr. Abdulla Madududi. The book was published in Kuwait before the collapse of Communism. Madududi states in his writings that:
Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it.
Again on the same page he states:
Islam requires the earth-not just a portion, but the whole planet-not because the sovereignty over the earth should be wrested from one nation or several nations and vested in one particular nation, but because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare program known as Islam.
The purpose of Islam, according to writers like Madududi, is to dispense with all governments, religions, and cultural idiosyncrasies that are found to be conflictive with the tenets of Islam. All sacrifices and exertions should be directed to achieve this one and only end. When one joins Islam and becomes a Muslim he joins a movement of social revolution, which is:
But a comprehensive system which envisages to annihilate all tyrannical and evil systems in the world and enforces its own program of reform which it (Islam) deems best for the well being of mankind.
This comprehensive system which is attempting to annihilate all alien forms of government is known in the Quran as “Hisb Allah, the Islamic party or the Ummah of Islam. Is this beginning to sound familiar?
Once the Hisb Allah party is formed in a Non-Islamic country it launches into the struggle to obtain the purpose for which it exists .
Madududi states that it is impossible for any Muslim to observe the necessary patterns of Islamic life while under any Non Islamic government. All Muslims in the West are to resist their governments with whatever force is required, and to fail to do so is to make himself out to be Anti Islamic. The call to arms is a clear ringing note in Islam. It is clear to me that in order to remain a valid Muslim one must not only support the concept of Jihad, but to actively engage in the struggle against Dar ul Harb.
This belief alone separates Islam from the other world religions. Islamists and Arabists in the West have long been looking for some, sort of Lutherian experience to arise out of the Middle East, so that it can throw off restraint and modernize like the rest of the world. Such people are dreaming, for Islam cannot be understood from a western perspective or approach, because Islam is socio-political in nature as well as religious. The differences in between Western Christianity and Islam are vast. We separated religion from State because we don’t want to repeat European history and such notions of separation do not exist in the Arab mind.
Personal insights:
In 1998 I had a friend of mine who is an Egyptian businessman in Dammam Saudi Arabia. I sometimes visited him and his family for dinner. On the outside he and his family seemed to be like every other family I have known in the West. He has a nice wife with a couple of neat children. They are from Cairo. One day I found myself waiting in their living room while they prepared an especially tasty dinner for me. I love books. I have been an avid reader since before the first grade, so when I find myself in any house I wandered over to the bookshelf to browse through the host’s book collection. The usual geography tomes and books that the children all over the world read were there, but I was shocked when I looked above his collection of business and college books to see two books together. What caught my eye and gave me one of the shocks of my life were BACK TO BACK on a bookshelf the KORAN and Hitler’s’ best selling book MEIN KAMPF. I was speechless because these two artifacts gave me a window through which I could glimpse their worldview. Everyone knew that Hitler was evil, so therefore his book must be also. The jolting shock came from seeing the great Koran right next to it. I was so stunned by what I had gained by insight that night that I could add little to the dining room conversation that evening. As I rode home in my four-wheel drive, I pondered about these two very important books and why my Egyptian friend chose to place them together on his shelf. There are many similarities in between Hitler’s book on his historical struggle and the book every Mohammedan follows. Both books are similar in many aspects and complement one another in ways that embarrass greatly the Muslim community worldwide. Both have been used to sway large populations in history. Both endorse violence as a means to an end. Both were Military leaders who led armies against peaceful countries. Both of these leaders ordered executions against large populations of Jews. Rational men outside their circles of influence considered both to be madmen of the first order. These two men both had popularity and devotion to them reached religious fervor during and after their lifetimes.
I noticed these two books in offices and bookshops and in the malls all over the Middle East. I was given a hardback copy of Mein Kampf from an American Caucasian Muslim when he reached the end of his teaching contract in Saudi Arabia. The frequency in which I had seen this book here in the Middle East tells me that this is more than some odd violent Near Easterner’s anti-Semitic attitude, but what had I stumbled on? The empirical proof shown to me since then on many bookshelves, both public and private have shown that my Egyptian friend wasn’t alone. Since then I had seen Muslims of Arabia and Muslims of other countries who had Hitler’s best seller in their possession also. This tells me that my suspicions about the Weltanschauung of World Islam are not simply products of a fertile imagination, but that fanatical Anti-Semitism within the house of Islam is a very real part of these people’s lives in this modern age! What I saw concerning Hitler and his book was disturbing enough, but what I keep hearing from my students and co-workers here is even worse! I wished you could have been a fly on my classroom wall this semester, for this is what you would have head one day when Hitler’s name came up:
“ I love Hitler teacher” “Hitler was a great man!” “ Are you German?” “ I have a picture of Hitler in my heart.” “The Jews have no place in this world” “They will kill us all, so therefore we must kill them.” “We should be happy concerning the deaths in the West.” “I have a picture of Osama on my cell phone!”
“Why was Hitler a great man?” I asked them after outburst like this one. One of my very nicest students I have ever had blurted out; “He cooked Jews in the oven teacher!” I am not a Jew, but inside I was physically sick that day. There have been many such days in my time here among the Arabs in the Gulf region. The above statements were made by the best of the best among their brightest students, and they are not alone, for I hear the same sort of language from intellectuals, professionals, and Medical doctors! One day while I was in a hospital in Saudi Arabia awaiting minor surgery my doctor, who was Egyptian, noticed a novel that I had in my hand. The book was red in color and had the Nazi swastika on it. “Oh, the Nazis.” He said reverently, “Are you German?” “No, but why do you ask?” “I love the Nazis” He told me. “Why do you love the Nazis?” I already knew the answers to that loaded question, but I wanted to hear it from this doctor who conveniently replied: “I love the Nazis for that one thing.” “What is that one thing?” I asked him. “Because they killed the Jews.” His reply disturbed me. “The Jews ruined the Egyptian economy.” “You are a medical doctor?” I had to question the obvious since all doctors of medicine have to take the Hippocratic oath and at that point the good doctor left me to my thoughts. This scenario plays itself out thousands of times each day like a broken record here in the Arab world. Time, and time again it has been my experience that it is the significant majority who believe such horrible things rather than the few. Arabs from other lands might tell me that these statements are made by backward Bedouin Arabs who have just recently came out of the fierce deserts, but a great many of these students that I hear these comments from do not hail from the Wahabi wastelands. They are from Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Bahrain! Again a Muslim from the West, or from India would tell me that this doesn’t reflect the real Islam, but when I take my five years of living here into account the opposite seems to be more the case. I have met American Muslims, Indian Muslims, and British Muslims who admired these cultural icons because they participate in Jihad, so the problems stem not from regional areas, but are found worldwide in the Muslim community of believers or UMMA as they would call themselves. I have noticed that at times during my tenure here in this part of the world that Muslims from the West were often much worse! “Bush attacks Afghanistan and he will open Pandora’s box” said one Black American Muslim to me in the hallways of the school were we taught. One could say from reading through this article that perhaps the Muslim was simply reflecting that trouble was coming, and that the writer is reading more into the situation than is warranted, but he was chortling while he told me this! There were eight or nine Muslims from the west who worked for the same organization that I did and I saw them laughing and celebrating many times over the three thousand deaths caused by World Islam! Several of these Western Muslims had earlier worked and lived in Pakistan. Why would any Westerner want to go to Pakistan where the per capita income is at about one half that of India? It has greatly distressed me all along to hear such statements again and again from the collective Arab Street. I was disturbed by this kind of talk in the years before, but after September 11 it has taken on a personal theme. In my earlier job I had been transferred to another classroom in which a large poster of the World Trade Center buildings had been conveniently displayed on the wall of my classroom three weeks after the destruction of those buildings. The poster wasn’t merely hanging there for several months before the terrorist attacks as the Saudi administration dutifully told me because all throughout the school I heard several students asking one another in Arabic for a picture of the twin towers so they could have one too! The next workday after the attack the Saudi administrative officers instructed the students not to bother the Western teachers or provoke them in any way. It was normal Saudi management practice to harass the students and the teachers regularly, but those first few days after the attacks the halls at the school were eerily silent with no one coming in the classrooms to bother us. The students thought that the Japanese must have done this. One Western Muslim said that the Colombians did this. I told them that it was more realistic to say that the terrorists came from this part of the world. I was later proven to be correct. Their own culture and religion blinds them against reality. The work environment was extremely tense here in Saudi Arabia following the attacks and teaching during those first days was a total nightmare! I was in shock and wanted to collapse on the floor, and I endured every minute of those horrible first days in agony. I was deeply hurt and offended and enraged at what had happened on September 11; however, I was still curious enough to go and find out how things were outside of the classroom. Night fell and I got in my suburban vehicle and drove down to the seaside next to the city sidewalks and restaurants to gauge for myself among the crowds how the local population reacted any different towards westerners. It was as if I had entered a completely different country! The hatred and coldness that I encountered again and again on the Arab Street that evening chilled me to the bone. During one part of that evening I was followed, ridiculed and harassed by Saudi teenagers and was told by them in Arabic to get out of the country. They kept up the harassment until I turned around and confronted them. Harassment they could take part in and enjoy, but an enraged Westerner they could not, so they crept back into the shadows and left me alone.
How cultural anthropology helped me in understanding
Many people have written about Jihad Islam from a political or religious standpoint, but I would dare to say that few have ever attempted to understand this phenomena from an anthropologist’s perspective. In both my college and graduate degrees I took a lot of cultural anthropology. I found these courses to be exciting and very relevant at the time of study! I also thought then that these courses in Anthropology were worth all the tuition money of my “higher education.” The culture that I now find myself in is extremely complex, and I find that the framework that those studies in cultural anthropology have given me go a long way in providing the keys to understand these very perplexing questions coming off the Arab Street.
As a teacher of English on one hand, and a student of culture on the other, I have the great fortune and opportunity to continue the long task of understanding what these people value. I must be able to determine for myself the values of a given society or civilization by not only listening to what cultural insiders are saying, but by observing other aspects of culture that communicate values from within that same culture. Any anthropologist worth his salt must be a good observer, listener, and a language learner. Moreover, I have the upper hand here because it is often the anthropologist from a different civilization who has better insight into the target culture by avoiding blind spots created by the same target culture.
The objects and behaviors that I find best reflect these values among the masses here in the birthplace of Islam are these heroes whom I call cultural icons. This personal study that I made served two purposes: It sifts the chaff from the wheat, and it forces me to look at the larger picture instead of only what I had experienced. Instead of watching and listening to a few people I took to looking more around me. What I found was a pattern from all that I observed. What I find disturbs me. I don’t think being an American from the West interfered too much for a Japanese, Mexican or Chinese anthropologist could have just as easily determined a pattern from my observations. Look at the question I have written below and observe the pattern I found.
WHAT DO BILL GATES, MICHAEL JORDAN, BABE RUTH, SADDAM HUSSEIN, ADOLPH HITLER, IDI AMIN, AND OSAMA BIN LADIN HAVE IN COMMON?
Bill Gates drops out from College to form his own multi billion dollar software company. Babe Ruth held the home run baseball title for over fifty years. Michael Jordan refined the sport of basketball and became the game’s greatest player in the history of that sport. Idi Amin is despised in the rest of the world for his sledgehammer tactics and admired in the Islamic world, for standing up to Israel during the Entebbe airfield Palestinian fiasco. Adolph Hitler’s name is synonymous with evil and is idolized here for gassing six million Jews. Osama Bin Ladin restored face to the Arab world by destroying the World Trade Center. Saddam Hussein stood up to the imperialist West and became the only Arab leader in modern history to attack Israel and get away with it. See a significant pattern here? If individual success didn’t matter in our culture Bill Gates probably would have ended up a librarian with his outstanding organizational skills. If Professional sports didn’t mean much in the States then it would have been foolish for Nike to sign on Michael Jordan as a promoter of tennis shoes, and Babe Ruth would have never become famous. Idi Amin would have been executed in his own country for the many thousands of murders carried out by his hand picked military, and Osama Bin Ladin would have stayed in construction.
The truth is that the West admires people like Bill Gates and countless other entrepreneurs who make life immeasurably easier in almost every aspect of modern life. Children and teenagers buy millions of dollars worth of tennis shoes and sport equipment because of great figures in professional sports like Jordan and Babe Ruth who excel in competition become the best in their fields. These success stories are admired as cultural icons all over the world. Osama Bin Ladin attacks the West and kills great numbers of Western citizens and is admired just as strongly in global Islamic community as is Michael Jackson and Elvis were in our world. Idi Amin held some 15 Jews as hostages and then killed a defenseless old Jewish woman in a wheelchair by throwing her down the stairs. The Saudis honor him for standing up to Israel by footing the bill in one of their finest hotels in the Red Sea town of Jidda complete with new Mercedes cars. He rants and raves about returning to power but even the Saudis don’t listen to him anymore.
I have two books in my hand: One of them calls Hitler the most evil man the world has ever known, and the other is a translation of the book Mein Kampf into the Arab language. They both capture so well what I am trying to communicate.
Adolph Hitler is remembered in the West for bringing WW II to the world through his ambitious hope of the thousand year Reich, and fifty million are dead as a result. For this he has brought great shame to the Germanic world. Mein Kampf is a best seller here in the gulf. It is really one of the few books that non westerners buy here, and the reason is that Hitler’s fascist government very nearly accomplished with the holocaust what the Arabs would do if they, but had the power to do so. He has been elevated to Hero status! Idi Amin and Osama Bin Ladin are also honored here among the leaders of the Gulf! It doesn’t really take training in Anthropology to see the obvious! Islam upholds what these killers have in common and is a religion of war rather than peace.
What world Islam wants is no secret, I hear it almost constantly pouring out of the mosques and from the mouths of Muslim co-teachers whom I work with and the students whom I teach. Political Islam seeks to dominate the entire earth and to subject every people group and language on the planet to the same atrocities administered to more ancient peoples. To think that World Islam wants to bring all peoples under the shadow of Mecca is ludicrous. Ethnographic exploration and research has uncovered over 7800 languages and even more people groups. To think that all of these different cultures and societies are going to wear the abayya is laughable. Are Eskimo women willing to wear the black garments and fast from sunup until sundown? That would pose a problem since the sun in their part of the world doesn’t even set during the summer! I guess they would have to starve during the fasting month of Ramadan of which every Muslim must endure annually. Are the Polynesian peoples willing to give up pig bartering because Islam wants to liberate them? What good is Islam in Polynesia where wealth is counted in the number of pigs rather than camels? Islam is a regional, monolingual, culturally bound religion from the remotest deserts of Arabia. It can only call itself a world religion because it has forced others to into its own pan Islam worldview. It restricts itself to the one language of Arabic and makes no apology for it. Western Christianity found itself significantly more flexible, and has adjusted within the process of modernity whereas Islam has not given an inch and is doomed in many ways to fail.
The process of Modernity and the unavoidable conflict with World Islam:
A more realistic reason for Arab hate is the inability of World Islam to come to terms with their failures to modernize. The most basic reason for that failure can be seen in what is not valued here. The Western values of hard work, individualism, egalitarianism, free speech, democracy and separation of church and state are not only absent from, but also despised by Islam. The cultures of the West have certain inherent principles that have actually made it the leading civilization on the planet today. It has lead for ages, it is leading now, and contrary to the interests of other civilizations it will continue to lead for ages to come. All things come to an end, but Euro-America has no foreseeable demise. That truth here is a bitter pill to swallow.
The tectonic plates of Modernity crush ever against the basic principles that make up World Islam never letting up for one moment. They feel keenly this ever-intensifying pressure. The power of the renaissance became evident in the development of the scientific principle which Islam never allowed to develop within its own civilization. The seismic shocks become more frequent by the hour and the World Islam is helpless and cannot adjust to it due to an utter lack of a work ethic of their own. This lack of decent work habits is blamed on the Ottoman Empire’s influence. I go out to the desert at night here to enjoy the still night air. I see tiny specks of light moving among the stars which are satellites weighing thousands of pounds. They circle overhead at over twenty thousand miles per hour. Every year I go home on vacation in an Airplane weighing thousands of tons at speeds of over six hundred miles an hour because of advances in Aerospace science. A Saudi professor who teaches a class here on Aerospace engineering constantly makes statements that Saudi Arabia is going to lead the world in Aerospace engineering. His proclamations are complete nonsense and sound as futile as Idi Amin’s prophetic diatribes on returning to power. I have yet to see the first Bedouin mechanic, plumber, electrician or welder! I don’t doubt that somewhere there are a few, but I have never seen any. It is the Phillippinos, Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis and Turks who do the blue collar work here and this is why Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf community have a vast problem with unemployment among their own people. This problem exists, not so much because the Saudi youth won’t work, but because he has no history of work and finds it deeply shameful. He wouldn’t know how to begin designing space stations no matter how much education he receives. Western headlines are awash with advances in every field. New areas of study are being opened in every field of learning at a staggering rate in Euro-America. We continue to progress at an increasingly faster pace. This benumbs them and they wonder why. Greece publishes yearly a significantly larger variety of books by far than do the entire Arab world. It is not difficult for me to understand because my students here in the Gulf are not conditioned to the learning process. Education is not nearly as important for the Arab as it is for the Westerner. One of my students failed to bring in his homework, so I asked him to explain. He told me: “teacher, I hate all books except the Quran.” “Really Teacher, I only love the Quran.” The main reason for their inability to learn or work well lies in the foundation of World Islam itself, and these embarrassing lapses exists wherever Islam dominates. Our culture facilitates self-learning, and we still produce students who are able to think on their own however much the American educational system is criticized. The gigantic economic forces that exist in the west are due in a very large part to the philosophy of decent government that respects humanity and allows it to flourish!
The great Islamist Bernard Lewis wrote out in his famous paper The roots of Muslim rage that Thomas Jefferson stated the following:
In matters of religion the maxims of civil government should be reversed and
We should rather say, “Divided we stand, united we fall.”
In more common terms we can say that decent government can only be possible if we unite for the purpose of self-governance. The foundations of Islam are diametrically opposed to anything remotely resembling democracy. The Jihadists, who follow the Quran’s logical outcome, state that not only all other forms of government are evil, but they are to be forced out of existence. An Islamic state is to be set up not only in the Middle East, but also in the entire world. World Islam states that not only are all Muslims to engage in Jihad, but teach that those who choose not to engage in Jihad are outside of Islam! This is what Bin Ladin, and many other like him all across the Islamic world teach. The cold war ended and the patterns of warfare changed just as Samuel Huntington in his famous article The clash of Civilizations and Bernard Lewis with his roots of Muslim rage predicted.
The last five hundred years of Euro-American civilization have led to astounding advances in medicine, technology, research, education, government, and military science. These great advances are why Euro-America so outstrips the rest of the world. Modernity with all of its headaches and conveniences is both something that the religio-political system of World Islam desires and despises at the same time. They don’t mind using our technology against us and, if given the chance, would not hesitate to annihilate the civilizations of the west in an instant if the tables were turned. Much of the outrage from the Arab Street comes from economic disparity. Finland with a population of five million people exports more manufactured goods than to the entire Arab world of over 260 million. The average Israeli citizen makes more than 17 times that of the average Arab with an economy that far outstrips all the rest of the region. This is true even if you include all of the Arab world, and not just the Gulf in that study. Another source of anger comes from how the oil wealth of the Gulf Arabs is spread. The lower Saudi classes do not benefit quite as much from oil wealth as their government would have the world believe. Wealthy Gulf Arabs flaunt what they have and those less fortunate get the crumbs. In my earlier job my students informed me that many of them had to wait several years after high school just to enter. Many have no choice but to wait because there was nothing else for them to do. The masses in the rest of the Arab world are unbelievably dirt poor. An earthquake leveled whole neighborhoods in Egypt in 1993. I paid an Imam the equivalent of a dollar to climb a tower of one of the prominent mosques and from what I saw in 1999 those neighborhoods are basically still untouched. The Arab commoner has a right to be angry and would like to see those in power removed, but World Islam has nothing to replace the unbelievably corrupt governments that already exist here. The local governments have a manifest inability to rule, but World Islam is entirely incapable of that daunting task. The highest birthrates in the world outside of a few parts of Black Africa are among the Arab populations. One of the local newspapers honored one Arab father for having 54 children. At current rates the next fifty years will see the Arab Nation reach a full billion! This ever-increasing population explosion will add further fuel to the fire as the standard of living drops dramatically. I can predict that the collective anger in the Arab street will get worse rather than better as time goes on. The local governments know this and desperately seek to channel this anger against popular enemies like Israel and the U.S. government. Arab Media is an effective brainwashing mechanism here and is used to machiavellian proportions. I read the news every day here. The printed pages serve to foment hatred and divert attention away from the real problems that plague them. The diatribes against Israel and the West continue to escalate, yet not one whisper jot, or tittle is allowed against the rulers that be.
The modern world had better pay attention to observations of articles like this one I am writing. They should be made into open source documents so that the entire world may know what outsiders like myself have noticed inside the mix. It is my fervent hope that influential powers in the rest of the world sit up and take notice, for the old adage is true about history: “Those who don’t pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it.” New agencies in the West now struggle to understand Islamic terrorism, but little about the worldview from which Islamic terror stems from is understood. It seems to me that we are crippled in this endeavor because of our inability to think outside of our own worldview. The greatest tactical mistake made by the Western powers lies in their thinking that World Islam is intrinsically good with morals and values that basically benefit civilization. How can that be true when they choose such evil men as their greatest heroes?
World War II was thrust upon us in the last century, and now we are forced into the arena of conflict again by people who hate with a much deeper conviction than the Nazis ever dreamed of having. To help in understanding the currents of Arab hate washing against America we can go to the Nazi propagandists who spoke a mere sixty years ago for the lies pouring out of the mouths of my students have been refined in part by Nazi Germany:
Americanism wrote a lieutenant of Hitler, has its roots in Jewry influence in the making and creating of the United States. This same propagandist has said in 1944 that the New World is in great danger of being destroyed from within by this Jewish influence and is in dire need of a savior from the Old World. That savior was supposed to be Adolph Hitler. Needless to say he is finished on the world arena in one sense, but tragically the lies that he strategically fed to his populations of people have grown into a monster out of control here in the world of Islam.
The terrible repercussions today are being felt worldwide not only in modern countries like the United States and Israel, but also in remote areas like Bali in Indonesia, and in the embassy bombings of East Africa. The successive attacks brought about by Al Qaida and other lesser groups like them in the last four years have hit almost every representative major worldview. Euro-America in the west is now engaged in war with World Islam. The Copts in Egypt, and the tribal Christians in the Sudan live with Islamic Terror daily. I have spoke with representatives of both who place their hope in the West! Other civilizations like Judaism, and Hinduism have also felt the weapons used by the weak. The only major worldview yet to be targeted are the Chinese. Why have they been left out? The bombings of the modern Islamikazis have been strangely lacking in that part of the world and this observation alone makes more than this writer suspicious! In my humble opinion the world community is slowly being drawn into this conflict whether or not the peaceniks all around the world agree! The majority of Arabs to this date still believe that the West needs to be wrested from the Jews. I work everyday alongside professionals who believe this! The propaganda that fills the newspapers in this region speaks of the Menacing Jewish influence that seeks to encircle the planet with its many grasping tentacles. Students asked me more than once about these Zionists plotting to take over the world, and why the Americans have allowed them free reign over U.S government and military. The newspapers in Arabia write articles to the Western professionals within the country hoping that the Americans the world over would come to their senses and throw off their Jewish Masters.
World Islam, until recently with the advent of oil and the western addiction to it, had enjoyed little economic impact on the modern arena. World Islam uses petrol dollars to its own ends, and violence is not only permitted in their worldview, but also espoused and encouraged by the religious pied pipers in the mosques, and I don’t have to be fluent in Arabic to understand much of what is being said! My university students carry photos of Bin Laden on their cell phones and draw Swastikas on their arms. They carve the beloved symbol on their desks. The system that the swastika represented is without a doubt the most evil system that the world has ever seen, and for the Muslims to liken their own worldview and ambitions with the likes of Hitler is to equate themselves with him. Hitler accomplished nothing but death and destruction in such a wide scale that it affected every one on the globe in one way or another with over fifty million dead. The same is happening at a lesser pace on the many bloody frontiers of World Islam. Ideas have consequences, and these consequences are being played out before our very eyes. When my students and Arab co-teachers tell me Hitler was a good man they show me that they suffer confusion between evil and good, and it is clear to me that World Islam faces a moral crisis. It doesn’t take an English teacher with a Master’s degree to see that the blackened wreckage and carnage we see on CNN is only a forbearance of much more to come in the following generations. It has been said in the recent past that if we had simply listened to what was coming out of the mosques of Arabia we wouldn’t have been caught unawares. I did hear, but teachers of modern languages like myself have little impact among policy makers of the West. More ought to be done, not only to collect information from those who have had experiences like mine here in the Middle East, but to somehow open source it so that the entire world may understand what we are up against and take action. What other travelers and cross cultural workers saw in Germany sixty years ago benumbed them yet few stitches were sown in time to our enduring sorrow.
It is true enough, as President Bush said, that not all Muslims adhere to violence as a way of life, but I am at odds whenever influential people say Islam is a religion of peace. I saw the elated crowds celebrating here in the streets after those hijacked planes found their mark! The news showed proof of celebrations like the one I witnessed in almost every Islamic land. The observation I made conflict with what the spin doctors created and nearly all who call themselves followers of Muhammad appreciate today the efforts of these cultural icons I so often see evidence of here in the Gulf region! I can certainly assure you that that there are many of the younger generation willing to step into the shoes of big leaguers here and become the next generation of players who want to grow up and make the big time. There are leagues of a different sort here who are just as determined and willing to emulate their own heroes as our young back in the west feel about basketball and baseball! Bill Gates made his billions, Hitler killed his millions, Osama targeted his thousands, and Babe Ruth hit his hundreds. The numbers in the bank accounts, scoreboards, and morgues don’t lie.
Conclusion:
I write this not from an ivory tower position funded by western universities, but from my personal experiences gained while teaching here in the birthplace of Islam. It is evident to me that Islam is now suffering a terrible crisis in this modern age. Their ancient pre-Islamic hatred of the Jews has taken on religious proportions, and they are only just beginning to work that hatred upon the West. Euro-America and indeed all of the other civilizations of the world cannot afford to remain with their heads buried in the sand thinking that Islam is simply a religion with the same intrinsic values as other religions. World Islam seeks to gain the entire world as its own and since it threatens all other civilizations, it should be countered by those same civilizations. World Islam teaches that armed conflict is holy and just and that those who are part of Dar Ul Islam are to resist with whatever force necessary until that part of the world is brought into its fold. We should pay attention to what they say here in the Middle East. The Mullahs that I hear on Fridays do not condemn the Islamikazis who espouse violence in the name of their religion. I have come across no article in the newspapers here that denounce terrorist attacks of any kind. Their apparent lack of concern disgusts me, and the apparent encouragement of violence against the innocent by Islamic leaders frightens me. The world ought to be shocked by World Islam’s schemes. The danger lies not so much in the hands of the terrorists, but in the values he holds. These ideals of his won’t simply die with him on the battlefield, but continue on as others like him enshrine his memory and lift him up as a hero. Can Islam change? That is now the question. We had to destroy the Nazi regime, but the foundations that World Islam is based on are much more basic and central to the fundamental beliefs of World Islam. It is Islam who has proven itself rigid and unable to adjust in the world we find ourselves in today.
One of the keys that may bring significant change might be constant pressure from outside the Islamic world. Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia and the other gulf countries, not because the Arabs saw how immoral it was, but because of the outside influences which did. Cataclysmic change has happened in this part of the world before. I think that the most significant answer to the problem of World Islam lies in the process of modernity, which they so despise. General Motors, Microsoft, Toshiba, Burger King, pavement machines, and ice factories have made inroads here and will continue to do so. Before the Arabists and the Islamists, and other teachers of Good Think in the west take offence at what I have said they should pay careful attention to what the Arab street says and does in their own native environment! Undoubtedly a large percentage of the responsibility lies on their doorstep.
I live here in the Middle East. I get to ask questions of these people and I write from here. I can observe their total way of life to the utmost of my ability. I do not hold a tenured position in some tower in the west and can easily recognize the dead carrion many of them are forced to pick over. What they produce should be thrown back to the buzzards. Many will no doubt find my style of writing as offensive as the truth they find in it.
I welcome any responses.
RobertPriceGuthrie@hotmail.com