When confronted with acts of stunning atrocity, such as the attacks of September 11th, the Madrid train bombings, the two attacks in Bali, or the synchronized bombings in the London underground, many navel-gazing Westerners are prompted to ask, “Why do they hate us?”
Although there’s something off-putting about the implicit blame-the-victim mentality in a question like that, it nonetheless is a legitimate question to ask.
Some people ask that question rhetorically: to them, the answer to “Why do they hate us?” always leads one place: it’s our fault. To these people, any horrific act anywhere in the world is a game of Six Degrees of Separation that traces back to something—anything—done by the United States.
Still, despite the fact that such a question seems most often posed by people who already have their minds made up about the answer, why not spend some time thinking about it?
First, let’s define “they.” For the purposes of this article, “they” refers to Jihadists: a radical subset of Muslims who believe it is their duty to kill anyone who refuses to abide by their religious law. Coincidentally, “they” are responsible for a disproportionate share of the terrorist attacks around the world, as un-politically-correct as this might be to recognize.
Now that we know who “they” are, who’s “us”? Even though the “us” that “they” hate pretty much amounts to all of Western society, I will take “us” to mean the United States, since in the eyes of many in the non-Western world, the U.S. symbolizes Western society. But as the ongoing terrorist attacks worldwide prove, people are grossly misinformed if they believe the United States is the only country the Jihadists wish to destroy.
Back to the question: why do they hate us?
Many reasons, really. But I can boil it down to a few major themes:
They hate us because modern technology carries Western pop culture all over the world. For some reason, television shows like Desperate Housewives, Big Love and Will and Grace seem to bug people who are already inclined towards jihad. (And yet, despite the existence of people who will burn down embassies over cartoons, Hollywood remains convinced that the greatest threat to freedom exists in the form of religious Americans and tragically closed-minded parents who don’t want their pre-teen daughters emulating Paris Hilton.) The fact that Western pop culture penetrates every corner of the globe is seen as a threat to other cultures, and understandably so.
They also hate us because, despite the great natural resources that many of their countries possess, the only people who ever seem to benefit from those resources are the ones who control the governments. So far, the world has found only one guaranteed formula for sustained economic prosperity: free-market capitalism combined with liberal democracy. But their governments typically control the national economies tightly, and to say that they’re not very liberal is the understatement of the millenium. So they see shared prosperity in a relatively oil-poor country like the U.S., and they’re quite understandably upset to be missing out. That would tend to make people quite resentful, and that resentment could threaten to corrode the power of the regime.
And, yes, they hate us because throughout history, we’ve had to deal with very nasty people around the globe in very nasty ways. We still do. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of living in a dangerous world. But many Americans believe that occasionally employing brutality to protect ourselves and free others is a legitimate option when the only path of moral purity leads directly to death. Nonetheless, less-than-savory actions committed by the United States provide a convenient hook for the anger of other populations.
But what if the answer to “Why do they hate us?” really has more to do with them than us? I know it’s blasphemy to some that a world problem wouldn’t be blamed on the United States, but hear me out:
Q: Why do they hate us?
A: They see the freedom of Western society and look around wondering why they have to constantly fear the Mullah, who might order a major body part be chopped off. So the Mullah has to convince them how vile we are, and how dangerous and unholy freedom is, because freedom and prosperity are a powerful lure, and they could cause the Mullah to lose his flock.
Consider the case of Saudi Arabia. Six years after the founding of the modern-day Saudi Arabia, oil was discovered there. Since then, the great wealth of the country has been controlled by the Saudi Royal Family, and since then, at the behest of the Saudi Royal Family, the people of Saudi Arabia have been controlled by the strict form of Islam known as Wahabbism. As long as the populace is controlled by Wahabbism, the anger of the people is directed at all those things that Wahabbism requires them to hate: basically, anything that isn’t Wahabbism. And this keeps their resentment directed away from the Saudi Royal Family.
15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia. But because the Saudi Royal Family wishes to remain on good terms with the U.S.—for obvious business reasons—the Saudi rulers wanted some good P.R. to cleanse their image. So the Saudis announced an effort to eradicate some of the more hateful passages from their children’s textbooks.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported:
A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom’s religious studies curriculum “encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the ‘other.’” Since then, the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts.
The Washington Post had some of the supposedly New and Improved, Now with Less Hate!™ textbooks analyzed, and here is just some of what they found (equivalent American school grade shown):
FIRST GRADE
“Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________.”FIFTH GRADE
“Whoever obeys the Prophet and accepts the oneness of God cannot maintain a loyal friendship with those who oppose God and His Prophet, even if they are his closest relatives.”“It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion of Islam.”
“A Muslim, even if he lives far away, is your brother in religion. Someone who opposes God, even if he is your brother by family tie, is your enemy in religion.”
SIXTH GRADE
“Just as Muslims were successful in the past when they came together in a sincere endeavor to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will the Arabs and Muslims emerge victorious, God willing, against the Jews and their allies if they stand together and fight a true jihad for God, for this is within God’s power.”EIGHTH GRADE
“[...] The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.”NINTH GRADE
“The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills.”“It is part of God’s wisdom that the struggle between the Muslim and the Jews should continue until the hour [of judgment].”
“Muslims will triumph because they are right. He who is right is always victorious, even if most people are against him.”
ELEVENTH GRADE
“The greeting ‘Peace be upon you’ is specifically for believers. It cannot be said to others.”“If one comes to a place where there is a mixture of Muslims and infidels, one should offer a greeting intended for the Muslims.”
“Do not yield to them [Christians and Jews] on a narrow road out of honor and respect.”
TWELFTH GRADE
“Jihad in the path of God — which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it — is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God.”
I applaud the Washington Post for delving into the ugly underbelly of radical Islam. It’s not something I see very frequently from our media, which tends to prefer moral equivalence. A “we’re just as bad as they are” mentality is the ultimate form of reportorial objectivity. Journalists say they aren’t supposed to take sides, and this seems to extend all the way to not taking a side in a conflict between one civilization that gives them the luxury of not taking sides and another that doesn’t really care what side they take, as long as they’re dead.
Judging from the fact that generation after generation is being raised to hate, I do not expect the Jihadists to surrender their war against Western civilization. It’s the self-loathing Westerners I’m worried about.
