Why Do They Hate Us?

An Iranian friend, who had to flee his homeland due to religious persecution, remarked that the problem with America's repeated statements that the War on Terrorism is not a war against Islam is that a large part of Islam had already declared war on America.  Some people wish to have these matters considered in simple, black & white terms - good vs. evil; freedom vs. tyranny, etc. out of fear of one losing one's moral compass or wallowing in a moral relativism.  Certainly if America and others are to win this new kind of war, a matter of will is essential - and to that concern the above-mentioned opinions hold value.   Yet there needs to be a reckoning of just how in blazes we got into this mess.  Asking 'Why?' will not hurt one's will to win - unless one's will is in fact weaker than one presumes it to be.

Tom Coyner


The Christian Science Monitor
Thursday, September 27, 2001

In Muslim world, a sense of humiliation

Reported by staff writers Scott Baldauf in Islamabad, Pakistan; Cameron W.  Barr in Amman, Jordan; Peter Ford in London; Nicole Gaouette in Jerusalem; Robert Marquand in Beijing; Scott Peterson in Sana, Yemen; Ilene R.  Prusher in Tokyo; as well as contributors Nicholas Blanford in Beirut, Lebanon; Sarah Gauch in Cairo; and Simon Montlake in Jakarta, Indonesia.

 ‘Why do they hate us?’asked President Bush in his speech to Congress last Thursday night.  It is a question that has ached in America’s heart for the past two weeks.  Why did those 19 men choose to wreck the icons of US military and economic power?  Most Arabs and Muslims knew the answer, even before they considered who was responsible.  Retired Pakistani Air Commodore Sajad Haider – a friend of the US – understood why.  Radical Egyptian-born cleric and US enemy Abu Hamza al-Masri understood.  And Jimmy Nur Zamzamy, a devout Muslim and advertising executive in Indonesia, understood.

They all understood that this assault was more precisely targeted than an attack on “civilization.”  First and foremost, it was an attack on America.  In the United States, military planners are deciding how to exact retribution.  To many people in the Middle East and beyond, where US policy has bred widespread anti-Americanism, the carnage of Sept. 11 was retribution.  And voices across the Muslim world are warning that if America doesn’t wage its war on terrorism in a way that the Muslim world considers just, America risks creating even greater animosity. 

Mr. Haider is a hero of Pakistan’s 1965 war against India, and a sworn friend of America.  But he and his neighbors in one of Islamabad’s toniest districts are clear about why their warm feelings toward the US are not widely shared in Pakistan.  In his dim office in a north London mosque, Abu Hamza al-Masri sympathizes with the goals of Osama bin Laden, fingered by US officials as the prime suspect behind the Sept. 11 attacks.  Abu Hamza has himself directed terrorist operations abroad, according to the British police, although for lack of evidence, they have never brought him to trial. 

Mr. Zamzamy, a 30-something advertising executive in Jakarta, knew what was behind the attack, too.  Trying to give his ads some zip and still stay within the bounds of his Muslim faith, he is keenly aware of the tensions between Islam and American style global capitalism. 

The 19 men – who US officials say hijacked four American passenger jets and flew them on suicide missions that left more than 7,000 people dead or missing – were all from the Middle East.  Most of the hijackers have been identified as Muslims.  Washington has accused Islamic fundamentalist renegade Osama bin Laden of masterminding the plot.  The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East were as shocked and horrified as any American by what they saw happening on their TV screens.  And they are frightened of being lumped together in the popular American imagination with the perpetrators of the attack. 

But from Jakarta to Cairo, Muslims and Arabs say that on reflection, they are not surprised by it.  And they do not share Mr. Bush’s view that the perpetrators did what they did because “they hate our freedoms.”  Rather, they say, a mood of resentment toward America and its behavior around the world has become so commonplace in their countries that it was bound to breed hostility, and even hatred. 

And the buttons that Mr. bin Laden pushes in his statements and interviews -the injustice done to the Palestinians, the cruelty of continued sanctions against Iraq, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the repressive and corrupt nature of US-backed Gulf governments – win a good deal of popular sympathy.  The resentment of the US has spread through societies demoralized by their recent history. 

In few of the world’s 50 or so Muslim countries have governments offered their citizens either prosperity or democracy.  Arab nations have lost three wars against their arch foe – and America’s closest ally – Israel.  A sense of failure and injustice is rising in the throats of millions.  Three weeks ago, a leading Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat, published a poem on its front page.  A long lament about the plight of the Arabs, addressed to a dead Syrian poet, it ended:

“Children are dying, but no one makes a move.
Houses are demolished, but no one makes a move.
Holy places are desecrated, but no one makes a move....
I am fed up with life in the world of mortals.
Find me a hole near you.  For a life of dignity is in those holes.”

It sounds as if it could have been written by a desperate and hopeless man, driven by frustration to seek death, perhaps martyrdom.  A young Palestinian refugee planning a suicide bomb attack, maybe.  In fact, it was written by the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London, a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the kingdom that is Washington’s closest Arab ally.

Against the background of that humiliated mood, America’s unchallenged military, economic, and cultural might be seen as an affront even if its policies in the Middle East were neutral.  And nobody voices that view.  From one end of the region to the other, the perception is that Israel can get away with murder – literally – and that Washington will turn a blind eye.  Clearly, the US and Israel have compelling reasons for their actions.  But little that US diplomats have done in recent years to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians has persuaded Arabs that the US is a fair-minded and equitable judge of Middle Eastern affairs.

Over the past year, Arab TV stations have broadcast countless pictures of Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian youths, Israeli tanks plowing into Palestinian homes, Israeli helicopters rocketing Palestinian streets.  And they know that the US sends more than $3 billion a year in military and economic aid to Israel.  “You see this every day, and what do you feel?” asks Rafiq Hariri, the portly prime minister of Lebanon, who is not an excitable man.  “It hurts me a lot.  But for hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, it drives them crazy.  They feel humiliated.”

RESENTMENT RISES, AND A RADICAL IS BORN

Ask Sheikh Abdul Majeed Atta why Palestinians may not like the United States, and he does not immediately answer.  Instead, he pads barefoot across the red swirls of his living room carpet and reaches for three framed photographs on the floor beside a couch.  The black-and-white prints show dusty, rock-strewn hills dotted with tiny tents and cinderblock houses: the early days of Duheisheh refugee camp, south of Bethlehem in the West Bank.  It was where Mr. Atta was born, and where his family has lived for more than half a century.  Atta’s family village was destroyed in the struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jews after Britain divided Palestine between them in 1948.  For 10 years his family of 13 lived in a tent.  The year Atta was born, the United Nations gave them a one-room house.  It doesn’t matter to Atta that the United States was not directly involved in “the catastrophe,” as Palestinians refer to the events of 1948.  Washington averted its eyes when it could have helped, he says, and since then has been firmly on Israel’s side.  Heavyset, solid, with a neatly trimmed full beard, Atta is the preacher at a nearby mosque.  He looks the part of the community leader, always meticulously turned out in crisp shirts and pressed trousers, gold rimmed reading glasses tucked into a pocket.

In the past year of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Atta has joined Hamas, the radical group responsible for recently sending most of the suicide bombers into Israeli towns.  Frustration at watching the rising Palestinian death toll at the hands of the Israeli army played a large part in his decision, he says.  His resentment at Israel, though, dates back to his infancy, and the stories he heard of his village, Ras Abu Amar, which he never knew.  That village is still alive for him, just as millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and throughout the Middle East cherish photos, house keys, and deeds to homes that no longer exist or which have housed Israelis for generations.  Today he lives in his own house in Duheisheh, a sprawling tangle of densely packed concrete buildings that crowd snaking, narrow alleys.  But he still dreams of the home he never knew, and recalls who took it from him, and remembers who they rely on for their strength.  What happened on Sept.  11 “was an awful thing, a tragedy, and since we live a continuous tragedy, we felt like this touched us,” he adds.  “But when we see something like this in Israel or the US, we feel a contradiction.  We see it’s a tragedy, but we remember that these are the people behind our tragedy.”  “Even small children know that Israel is nothing without America,” says Atta.  “And here America means F-16, M-16, Apache helicopters, the tools Israelis use to kill us and destroy our homes.”

SUPERPOWER SWAGGER

Such weapons are very much the visible face of American policy in the Middle East, where military might has held the balance of power for 50 years.  Thousands of US soldiers stationed in the Gulf, and billions of US dollars each year in military aid to Israel, Egypt, and other allies, have shored up Washington’s interests in the strategically crucial, oil-rich region.  That military presence and power looks like swagger to some in the Muslim world, even far from the flashpoints.  “Now America is ready with its airplanes to bomb this poor nation [Afghanistan], and most people in Indonesia don’t like arrogance,” says Imam Budi Prasodjo, an Indonesian sociologist and talk-show host.

“You are a superpower, you are a military superpower, and you can do whatever you want.  People don’t like that, and this is dangerous,” he adds.

“America should spread its culture, rather than weapons or tanks,” adds Mohammed el-Sayed Said, deputy director of Cairo’s influential Al Ahram think tank.  “They need to act like any respectable commander or leader of an army.  They can’t just project an image of contempt for those they wish to lead.”  Ten years ago, at the head of a broad coalition of Western and Arab countries, the United States used its superpower status to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.  Since then, however, Washington has found itself alone – save for loyal ally Britain – in its determination to keep bombing Iraq, and to keep imposing strict economic sanctions that the United Nations says are partly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children.  Those deaths, and those bombs (which US and British planes drop regularly, but without fanfare), are felt keenly among fellow Arabs.  And Saniya Ghussein knows all about bombs.

A DAUGHTER DIES, AND PARENTS WAIT FOR US APOLOGY

In the middle of the night of April 16, 1986, the deafening sound of anti-aircraft guns woke Saniya Ghussein with a sudden start. 

“My God,” she thought, “there’s a war being fought above my house.”  She slipped out of bed and ran into the bedroom where her husband Bassem and their 7-year-old daughter Kinda had fallen asleep earlier in the evening.  “Bassem, the Americans are here,” she said urgently.  “It looks like they’re going to hit us.”  She checked on her other daughter, Raafat.  She had been suffering from her annual bout of hay fever, and the 18-year-old art student was in the television room next to the humidifier so she could breathe easier.  Raafat was still sleeping, completely oblivious of all the commotion going on around her, due to the medication she had taken earlier.  There was little Saniya felt she could do.  She climbed back into bed and pulled the sheets tight around her.  Bassem lay awake on the bed, listening to the appalling noise in the night sky above. 

A Palestinian-born Lebanese national, Bassem had worked in Libya as an engineer for Occidental, the American oil giant, for 20 years, helping exploit the country’s massive oil reserves.  He and his family lived in the up market Ben Ashour neighborhood of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on the ground floor of a two-story apartment block.  Bassem never heard the explosion.  Instead, he watched in astonishment as the window frame suddenly flew into the room, and the roof collapsed on top of him and his daughter.  Kinda was screaming in the darkness near him.  Bassem tried to move, but was pinned by the rubble.  He groped in the blackness for Kinda. 

“Don’t worry,” he said, squeezing his daughter’s hand.  “Daddy’s here, don’t cry, it will be okay.”  The blast had knocked Saniya unconscious.  She woke to hear Bassem calling from the next room and Kinda screaming.  She stumbled in the darkness, barefoot across the rubble and glass shards, choking on the fumes from the missile blast, as she called her daughter’s name “Raafat!  Raafat!” for several minutes.  But there was no response, and Saniya knew with a terrible certainty that her daughter was dead.  “Bassem,” she cried.  “Raafat has gone.” 

Pinned beneath the rubble, Bassem heard his wife’s words, and he felt a deep sense of anger and resentment well up inside him.  His life and that of his family had been shattered, and nothing would ever be the same again.  It took them eight hours to dig Raafat out from under the ruins of the house.

 “Our pain and agony, which I cannot describe, started at that moment,” Saniya says.  Raafat was one of an estimated 55 victims of an air raid mounted by US warplanes against a series of targets in Tripoli and another Libyan city, Benghazi.  The attacks were in retaliation for the bombing of a disco in Berlin, Germany, 10 days earlier in which 200 people were injured, 63 of them US soldiers; one soldier and one civilian were killed.  The Reagan administration blamed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. 

Bassem and Saniya Ghussein are not natural anti-Americans.  Bassem studied in the US before going to work for Esso and then Occidental.  He sent Raafat to an American Catholic school, and on family trips to the US, Saniya would take Raafat to Disney World in Florida.  “We did all the typical American things,” she says.  But since that terrible night 16 years ago, neither Bassem nor Saniya have stepped foot in America. 

They returned to Beirut in 1994 when Bassem retired.  In 1989, the Libyan government enlisted the help of Ramsey Clark, an attorney general during the Carter administration, to file a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for the civilian deaths during the air raids. 

“When Clark came to collect our documents and evidence, I asked him if he thought we had a case,” Bassem recalls.  “He said ‘Oh, definitely.  This was murder.’” But US district court judge Thomas Penfield Jackson disagreed.  He dismissed the suit, and fined Clark for presenting a “frivolous” case that “offered no hope whatsoever of success.” 

Twelve years later, the court’s decision still rankles with Bassem.  “I will only return to America when I know someone will listen to me and say: ‘yes, it was our fault your daughter died, and I am sorry.’  So long as they think my daughter’s death is ‘frivolous,’ I won’t go back,” Bassem says. 

The Ghusseins have no sympathy for religious extremism and thoroughly condemn the Sept.  11 suicide bombings in New York and Washington.  Yet they both maintain that the devastating attack was a result of America’s “arrogant” policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.  “We wish the American people could see what their governments are doing in the rest of the world,” Saniya says.

A FEELING OF BETRAYAL AMONG FRIENDS

On the other side of Asia, in Pakistan, Air Commodore Haider would sympathize with the Ghusseins’ wish.  He has always been a friend of the United States, and not just because he enjoyed the 10 years he spent in Washington as his country’s military attaché.  Like most other members of the ruling elite in Pakistan, in the armed forces, in business, and in the political parties, he sees America as a natural ally.  But not a reliable one.  The prevailing mood in Pakistan of anger and suspicion toward the United States springs from a deeply rooted perception that the US has been a fickle friend, Haider says, and not just to Pakistan, but to other nations in the Muslim world.  Continued on next page

If there was a moment of betrayal for Haider, it was the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, largely over the future of Kashmir.  As Indian tanks advanced on the Pakistani metropolis of Lahore, Haider was head of a squadron of F-86 Sabre jets sent to destroy them.  India’s Soviet allies helped with money, arms, and diplomatic support.  But at a crucial moment, Pakistan’s ally, the US, refused to send more weapons.  As it turned out, Pakistan was able to defeat the Indian attack on Lahore and elsewhere without US help.  Haider’s squadron decimated the column of Indian tanks that had reached to within six miles of Lahore.  But the lesson lingered: America cannot be trusted. 

“There is a feeling of being betrayed, it’s a feeling of being let down, and you can only be let down by somebody you care for,” says Haider, out for an evening stroll in a tony Islamabad neighborhood.  “They said you will be the bulwark of America and of the free world against Communism.  But then they dropped a friend for no good reason.” 

Today, Haider sees a “convergence of interests” between the United States and Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.  But he says that President Bush will need to watch his language when he talks about the Muslim world. 

“When Bush talked of a Crusade ...  it was not a slip of the tongue.  It was a mindset.  When they talk of terrorism, the only thing they have in mind is Islam.” 

Ultimately, Haider does see a way for America and Muslim nations to become lasting friends, but only if the US begins to give as much weight to the interests of Muslim nations as it does to Israel.  “When you deny justice to people, which you have been doing for several decades in Palestine, and they are intelligent, sensitive people, they are going to find something to do,” warns Haider.  “They might take shelter in Islam, in fatalism, and some will come to despise you.”

AN EGYPTIAN ‘INSPIRED’ TO JOIN AFGHAN FIGHTERS

Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Muslim cleric who runs a mosque in a shabby district of north London, has certainly come to despise America.  Abu Hamza says he used to admire the West when he was a young man – so much so that he dropped out of university in his native Alexandria, Egypt, to study in Britain.  And he clearly had nothing against the British government when he took a job as a civil engineer at Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point, after he graduated.  But as he immersed himself more and more in religious studies, and came into contact with more and more Arab mujahideen, who had traveled from the mountains of Afghanistan to England for medical treatment, he began to change his outlook. 

“When you see how happy they are, how anxious to just have a new limb so they can run again and fight again, not thinking of retiring, their main ambition is to get killed in the cause of God ...  you see another dimension in the verses of the Koran,” says Abu Hamza. 

Inspired by their example, he took his family to Afghanistan in 1990, to work there as a civil engineer, building roads, tunnels, and “anything I could do.”  And he also fought with the mujahideen against Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah (seen as a Russian stand-in supported by the Soviets), until he blew both his hands off and lost the sight in his left eye, in a mine explosion. 

What transformed him and his comrades-in-arms from anti-Soviet to anti-American militants, he says, was the way Washington abandoned them at the end of the war in Afghanistan, and sought to disarm and disperse them.  “It was when the Americans took the knife out of the Russians and stabbed it in our back, it’s as simple as that,” says Abu Hamza.  “It was a natural turn, not a theoretical one.“ 

In the meantime, they were bombarding Iraq and occupying the [Arabian] peninsula,” he says, referring to the US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, “and then with the witch hunt against the mujahideen, all of it came together, that was a full-scale war, it was very clear.”

Abu Hamza would rather see Islamic militants fight corrupt or secular Arab governments before they take on America (indeed, the Yemeni government has sought his extradition from Britain for plotting to overthrow the government in Sana).  But he is in no doubt that the American government brought the events of Sept.  11 on its own head. 

“The Americans wanted to fight the Russians with Muslim blood, and they could only justify that by triggering the word ‘jihad,’ ” he argues.“ 

Unfortunately for everybody except the Muslims, when that button is pushed, it does not come back that easy.  It only keeps going on and on until the Muslim empire swallows every empire existing.” 

Can he understand the motivation behind the assault on New York and Washington?  “The motivation is everywhere,” he says, with the current US administration.  “When a president stands up before the planet and says an American comes first, he is only preaching hatred.  When a president stands up and says we don’t honor our missile treaty with the Russians, he is only preaching arrogance.  When he refuses to condemn what’s happening in Palestine, he is only preaching tyranny.“

"American foreign policy has invited everybody, actually, to try to humiliate America, and to give it a bloody nose,” he adds.

IN JAKARTA, COUNTERING AMERICAN CULTURE WITHOUT VIOLENCE

You wouldn’t catch Rizky “Jimmy” Nur Zamzamy justifying violence that way, though he professes just as deep an attachment to Islam as Abu Hamza.  Mr. Zamzamy, a rangy young Indonesian advertising executive in a pink shirt, is sitting in a Western-style cafe in Jakarta, his cell phone at the ready, and his fried chicken growing cold as he explains how he tries to be a good Muslim by right action, not fighting. 

That, he feels, is the best way of countering what he sees as the corrupting influence of American culture and morals on traditional Indonesian ways of life in the largest Muslim country in the world.  Until a few years ago, Zamzamy led a regular secular life, hanging out in bars and dating women.  Then he met a Muslim teacher who became his spiritual guide.  Now he follows Islamic teachings and donates most of his $1,300 monthly salary to his “guru” to be spent on building mosques and helping the poor.  He says he has made sure that none of the money goes to extremist groups that use violence in the name of Islam, such as the Laskar Jihad group, locked in bloody battle with Christians in the Maluku region of Indonesia.

Two years ago, in line with his growing religious beliefs, he quit the advertising agency he had worked for and set up his own company along Islamic lines: He won’t take banks or alcoholic-beverage producers as clients, for example, and he does no business on Friday, the Muslim holy day.  But he is relaxed about those who don’t share his beliefs: He does not insist that his wife wear a headscarf, for example, and he is not uncomfortable sitting alongside the rich young Jakartans in the cafe who are flirting and drinking.  They must make their own choices, he says.  And though he does not like the sexual overtones of American pop culture, he knows that “you can’t hide from American culture.”  By living his life according to Islamic precepts, he says, “I am fighting America in my own way.  But I don’t agree with violence.”

AMBIVALENCE ABOUT AMERICA

All over the Muslim world, young people like Zamzamy are juggling their sense of Islamic identity with the trappings of a globalized, secular society.  In a classroom of Al Khair University, set in a concrete office park in Islamabad, Nabil Ahmed, a business student, and his classmates are fuming over their president’s betrayal of the Pakistani people by pledging to support what they fear will turn into a crusade against Muslims. 

Ahmed and his friends are well-dressed, middle-class boys, and represent neither the old-money security of Pakistan’s elite nor dirt-poor peasants who make up the bulk of Pakistan’s angry conservative masses.  They are the silent majority of Pakistan, with their feet firmly planted in both the East and the West.  On weekdays, they listen to Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton, wear Dockers and Van Heusen shirts.  On weekends, many switch to traditional salwar kameez outfits and go with their fathers to the mosque to pray.  They have much to gain from a Western style of life, and most have plans to move to the United States for a few years to make some money before returning home to Pakistan.  Yet despite their attraction to the West, they are wary of it too. 

“Most of us here like it both ways, we like American fashion, American music, American movies, but in the end, we are Muslims,” says Ahmed.  “The Holy Prophet said that all Muslims are like one body, and if one part of the body gets injured, then all parts feel that pain.  If one Muslim is injured by non-Muslims in Afghanistan, it is the duty of all Muslims of the world to help him.” 

Like his friends, Ahmed feels that America has double standards toward its friends and enemies.  America attacks Iraq if it invades Kuwait, but allows Israel to bulldoze Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  It ostracizes a Muslim nation like Sudan for oppressing its Christian minority, but allows Russia to bomb its Muslim minority into submission in Chechnya.  And while the US supported many “freedom fighter” movements in the past few decades, including the contra movement in Nicaragua, America labels Pakistan and Afghanistan as terrorist states because they support militant Muslim groups fighting in the Indian state of Kashmir and elsewhere. 

“There is only one way for America to be a friend of Islam,” says Ahmed.  “And that is if they consider our lives to be as precious as their own.  “  If Americans are concerned about the 6,500 deaths in the World Trade Center, let them talk also about the deaths in Kashmir, in Palestine, in Chechnya, in Bosnia.  It is this double standard that creates hatred.” 

Ahmed’s ambivalence about America – his desire to live and work there, his admiration for its values, but his anger at its behavior around the world – is broadly shared across the Muslim world and Arab world.

“I think they hate us because of what we do, and it seems to contradict who we say we are,” says Bruce Lawrence, a professor of religion at Duke University, referring to people in the Middle East.  “The major issue that our policy seems to contradict our own basic values.” 

That seems clear enough to Muslims who sympathize with the Palestinians, and who say that Washington should force Israel to abide by United Nations resolutions to withdraw from the occupied territories.  “The Americans say September 11th was an attack on civilization,” says Mr. Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister.  “But what does civilized society mean if not a society that lives according to the law?” 

It also seems clear to citizens of monarchical states in the Gulf, where elections are unknown and women’s rights severely restricted.  “Since the Cold War ended, America has talked about promoting democracy,” says John Esposito, head of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington.  “But we don’t do anything about it in repressive regimes in the Middle East, so you can understand wide-spread anti-Americanism there.” 

At the same time, the state-run media – which is all the media there is across much of the Middle East – often fan the flames of anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment because that helps focus citizens’ minds on something other than their own government’s shortcomings.  In Sana, the Yemeni capital, where queues of visa-seekers line up daily outside the US embassy, the ambivalence about America is clear. 

“When you go there, you really love the United States,” says Murad al-Murayri, a US-trained physicist.  “You are treated like a human being, much better than in your own country.  But when you go back home, you find the US applies justice and fairness to its own people, but not abroad.  In this era of globalization, that cannot stand.” 

Nor has the mood that has gripped Washington over the past two weeks done much to reassure skeptics, says François Burgat, a French social scientist in Yemen.  “When Bush says ‘crusade’, or that he wants bin Laden ‘dead or alive’, that is a fatwa (religious edict) without any judicial review,” he cautions.  “It denies all the principles that America is supposed to be.” 

A fatwa is something Amirul Haq, a Pakistani shopkeeper whose son died two years in a jihad in Kashmir, understands better than judicial review.  “When I heard that my son died, I was satisfied,” he says. 

It’s a sentiment shared by Azad Khan, too.  On a hot Sunday afternoon in Mardan, Pakistan, Mr. Khan and his family have laid out a feast in a small guesthouse next to the local mosque.  They are celebrating because they have just heard that Mr. Khan’s 20-year-old son, Saeed, has been killed in a gun battle with Indian troops in the part of Jammu and Kashmir state that is under Indian control.  With his death, Saeed has become another shahid, a martyr and heroic defender of the Muslims against the enemies of Islam.  According to the Koran, shahideen are not actually dead; they are still alive, they just can’t be seen.  And through acts of bravery, a shahid guarantees that his whole family will go to heaven. 

“It is not a thing to be mourned.  We are happy,” says Khan, sitting down to a meal of chicken and mutton, rice and bread, along with leaders of the group with which Saeed had fought.  “I told him to take part in jihad [holy war] because he is the son of a Muslim,” Khan says.  “And just as we fight in Kashmir, if we need to fight against the United States in Afghanistan we are ready, because we are Muslims.  It is our duty to fight against any infidels who are threatening our Muslim brothers.” 

It’s not likely that many Pakistanis, or other Muslims, will actually go to Afghanistan to fight the Americans – assuming American soldiers land there.  Khan’s militant views are not shared by most of his countrymen.  But in a broader sense, and in the longer term, many people in the Middle East fear that the coming war against terrorism – unless it is waged with the utmost caution – could unleash new waves of anti-American sentiment.  Jamal al-Adimi, a US-educated Yemeni lawyer, speaks for many when he warns that “if violence escalates, you bring seeds and water for terrorism.  You kill someone’s brother or mother, and you will just get more crazy people.” 

Trying to root out terrorism without replowing the soil in which it grows – which means rethinking the policies that breed anti-American sentiment – is unlikely to succeed, say ordinary Middle Easterners and some of their leaders.  On the practical level, Hariri points out, “launching a war is in the hands of the Americans, but winning it needs everybody.  And that means everybody should see that he has an interest in joining the coalition” that Washington is building. 

On a higher level, argues Bassam Tibi, a professor of international relations at Gottingen University in Germany, and an expert on political Islam, “we need value consensus between the West and Islam on democracy and human rights to combat Islamic fundamentalism.  We can’t do it with bombs and shooting – that will only exacerbate the problem.”

Young, educated, and anti-American
By Cameron W.  Barr
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

AMMAN, JORDAN

These three young Jordanians – worldly, well educated, and well off – ought to be counted among America’s allies in the Middle East.  They embrace equality and democracy, and are steeped in American culture.  One actually watched “Pearl Harbor” all the way through.  But if America’s products and principles appeal, its policies appall.

Meet Rasha Atallah.  Born in Kuwait and educated in Jordan and Canada, she works on information systems for Jordan’s water authority.  Ghaith Madadha, a budding journalist, grew up in the US and Europe as the son of a diplomat.  He has a master’s degree in nationalism, culture, and society, sports a trim goatee, and drops Noam Chomsky into his conversation.  Hams Rabah, the youngest of the three, is the only one to have been born and raised in Jordan, but now attends university in Wales.  She is anxious about her return to school in the aftermath of Sept.  11. 

“People have an even worse impression about Arabs,” she says.  “They hate us even more now.” 

What most perturbs all three is the distance between the US rhetoric they hear and the reality they perceive. 

“All the Americans ever talk about is their freedom, and their liberty, and their independence, and they can't see that they are actually taking that away from people who have lived in that land for generations and generations,” says Ms.  Atallah.  By “people” she means Palestinians, and by “that land,” Palestine. 

Like the majority of Jordanians, Atallah is of Palestinian origin.  For her, the fate of the Palestinians is the burning issue, in part because it is personal. 

“It’s really sad that I’m a Palestinian, my father’s a Palestinian, my mom’s a Palestinian.  We have land there, we have homes there, we have family there, and when I want to go for a visit, I need to wait outside the Israeli Embassy for four hours and fill out a form and have some freak of nature come and tell me you need a visa to go to your homeland,” Atallah says.  “An American or a Canadian or a European can just walk into Palestine and me – a Palestinian – I can't go visit my uncle without permission from the Israeli government.” 

Mr. Madadha suggests that Americans can begin to fix the situation by adopting “a sense of justice or equality in the way they treat things.”  As it stands, he says, “if the Israelis go and do something – attack, or kill civilians – it’s labeled self-defense ...  while when a Palestinian does the same thing it “is instantly condemned as terrorism.” 

He sees two reasons for the lack of justice and equality.  “One is that Israel’s position in the Middle East is that of a proxy of America to a certain extent – keeping the area under control, carrying out American interests, etc.  While at the same time it’s difficult to deny that there is a strong … pro-Israel lobby in the US which has a certain hand in decision-forming and in the media – and in the disinformation served the American public.” 

Ms.  Rabah shares the view that Americans are misinformed.  “Only one side is being portrayed....  And that’s why everyone has a bad impression about the Arabs – being portrayed....  that they’re terrorists and stuff….I think [Americans] would sympathize a bit more with the Arabs, and it would be different if they were aware of what’s really going on,” says Rabah. 

Shock, horror, sorrow – these are the words the three use to describe their reactions to the attacks on Sept.  11.  Then come the qualifications.  Atallah is adamant that because no proof has been offered, Americans are wrong to accuse Arabs. 

Madhaba says the attacks “may be … not as bad as the things the American government itself has carried out.”  He cites various Israeli atrocities, America’s use of “terrorism” to undermine the Nicaraguan regime in the 1980s, the war in Vietnam, the bombardment of Laos.  Atallah’s fear is that an Arab was indeed responsible.  But even that has to be qualified: “It’s great, because it’ll be nice for us to get some kind of revenge, but it’s going to really ruin things in the Middle East.” 

She adds later: “I have friends who work on Wall Street, who live in Manhattan, and I was worried about them, but the end result is, you know, now the Americans know you can't mess with people....” Still, there is reason to admire America, and not just for its pop culture.  Atallah: “There’s so much more liberty in the West than there is here....  I've always been raised in a family … where everything’s OK for the girls and for the boys – it’s the same.  And that’s an ideal that’s not from the Middle East, it’s so Western.  I appreciate it.  It’s made me a stronger person, [with a] better character, and it is the Western influence.”

50 YEARS OF US POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

1947-48 UN votes to partition Palestine into two states – one for Jews, one for Palestinian Arabs.  Arab states invade; 300,000 Palestinians flee Jewish-controlled areas.  Jewish forces prevail, declaring Israeli independence.  US recognizes Israel..

1953 CIA helps Iran’s military stage a coup, deposing elected PM Mohammad Mossadeq, whom US sees as communist threat.  US oversees installation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pavlavi as ruler of Iran.

1956 Israel attacks Egypt for control of Suez Canal.  Britain and France veto US-sponsored UN resolution calling for halt to military action.  British forces attack Egypt.

1960 Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela form Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations (OPEC).

1966 US sells its first jet bombers to Israel, breaking with a 1956 decision not to sell arms to the Jewish state.

1967 Six-Day War.  Israel launches preemptive strike against Arab neighbors, capturing Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.  Kuwait and Iraq cut oil supplies to US.  UN adopts Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw from captured territory.  Israel refuses.

1968 First major hijacking by Arab militants occurs on El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv, marking decades of hostage-takings, hijackings, and assassinations as a strategy by Arab militant groups.

1969 Muammar Qaddafi comes to power in Libyan coup and orders US Air Force to evacuate Tripoli.

1972 Eight Arab commandos of Palestinian group Black September kill 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.

1973 Egypt and Syria attack Israel over its occupation of the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.  US gives $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel, turning tide of battle to Israel’s favor.  Arab states cut US oil shipments.

1974 UN General Assembly recognizes right of Palestinians to independence.

1976 The UN votes on a resolution accusing Israel of war crimes in occupied Arab territories.  US casts lone “no” vote.  US Ambassador to Lebanon Francis Meloy and an adviser are shot to death in Beirut.  US closes Embassy there.

1978 Egypt and Israel sign US-brokered Camp David peace treaty.  Eighteen Arab countries impose an economic boycott on Egypt.  Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin receive Nobel Peace Prize.

1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini leads grass-roots Islamic revolution in Iran, deriding the US as “the great Satan.”  Iranian students storm US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage for next 15 months.  US imposes sanctions.  Protesters attack US Embassies in Libya and Pakistan.

1981 Israel bombs Iraqi nuclear reactor.  Muslim militants opposed to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel assassinate Egyptian President Sadat.

1982 Israel invades Lebanon to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization, facilitate election of friendly government, and form 25-mile security zone along Israel’s border.  Defense Minister Ariel Sharon permits Lebanese Christian militiamen to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut.  The ensuing three-day massacre kills 600 or more civilian refugees.  US and other nations deploy peacekeeping troops in Lebanon.

1983 A truck bomb explodes in US Marines’ barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 soldiers.  US forces withdraw.

1986 US bombs Libya in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub frequented by US servicemen.  The air strike kills 15 people, including the infant daughter of leader Muammar Qaddafi.  All Arab nations condemn the attack.

1987 Start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

1990 Iraq invades Kuwait.  Saddam Hussein links pullout to Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories.  UN imposes sanctions that continue to hobble Iraq’s economy in effort to force Iraqi compliance with weapons resolutions.

1991 US and coalition launch attacks against Iraq from Saudi Arabia.  Gulf War ends after some three months, but US deployment continues even now, with 17,000 to 24,000 US troops in region at any time.

1993 World Trade Center in New York is bombed, killing six.  US Special Forces, deployed as peacekeepers in Somalia, attempt to capture warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.  Eighteen US servicemen are killed.  Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sign historic peace declaration in White House ceremony with President Clinton.

1994 Jordan and Israel sign peace treaty.  Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive Nobel Peace Prize for 1993 agreement.

1995 US announces trade ban against Iran, reinforcing sanctions in effect since 1979.  Rabin is assassinated, two years after peace deal with Palestinians.  In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a car bomb explodes outside an office housing US military personnel.  Seven are killed, including five Americans.  Three Islamist groups claim responsibility.

1996 A truck bomb explodes outside a US military barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US airmen.  UN reports that sanctions cause 4,500 Iraqi children under 5 to die each month.

1997 Egyptian Islamic Group massacres 62 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Luxor, Egypt.  The group claims it is retaliation for US imprisonment of Sheikh Omar Abdel al-Rahman, who is later convicted in 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1998 Bombs explode outside US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people.  US launches cruise-missile attacks on sites in Sudan and Afghanistan allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden.  US indicts bin Laden for committing acts of terrorism against Americans abroad.

1999 Islamic militants, traced to bin Laden, are arrested for plot to bomb tourist sites during millennium celebrations.

2000 Camp David negotiations fail.  Sharon visits Temple Mount in Jerusalem, sparking current Palestinian uprising.  USS Cole bombing in Yemen’s Aden harbor kills 17 American sailors.  Bin Laden denies responsibility, but applauds the act.

2001 Hijackers crash two planes into World Trade Center in New York, one into Pentagon, and one in Pennsylvania.  More than 7,000 people are dead or missing.

 How the world views a US military response

In your opinion, once the identity of the terrorists is known, should the American government launch a military attack on the country or countries where the terrorists are based, or should the American government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?

Source: Gallup International surveys Sept.  14 to 17.