Why do they hate us?
Remember all the handwringing in some quarters after 9/11/01 asking, of the Islamic exgtremists prone to terrorism, why do they hate us? The question mostly came from left-wing media personalities, left-wing pundits, and left-wing academics — most left-wing politicians being too in touch with the polls to wallow in that sort of self-absorbtion. And the answer, stated or implied, was invariably exactly the same as that of the questioner’s main grievance against American society in particular or Western society in general. (They should have phrased it, “Why do I hate us?”)
Few actually address the actual grievances of the actual terrorists and their actual supporters. But in the of last week’s attack in London, Christopher Hitchens — not someone I usually agree with on anything — took on that question, and got it right:
We know very well what the “grievances” of the jihadists are.
The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won’t abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor’s liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.
For a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.
It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on “our” values or “our” way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation.
As for the claim that this is all Bush and Blair’s fault because of Iraq War (which as I like to remind people, came after 9/11/01), Hitchens says:
I know perfectly well there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon us by his alliance with George Bush.
A word of advice to them: try and keep it down, will you? Or wait at least until the funerals are over. And beware of the non-sequitur: you can be as opposed to the Iraq operation as much as you like, but you can’t get from that “grievance” to the detonating of explosives at rush hour on London buses and tubes.
Don’t even try to connect the two. By George Galloway’s logic, British squaddies in Iraq are the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?
Simple — they think we in the West are the psychotic killers. They think Osama bin Laden builds day care centers, and they think that George W. Bush is a terrorist.
The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose.
They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.
I wish I shared his “optimism.” I believe we “must not” surrender and I expect and pray that we “will not” surrender, but I do not believe we “cannot” surrender. If people like U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and British M.P. George Galloway ever get control, we will surrender — regardless of whether there is anyone with whom to negotiate or to whom to capitulate. They will simply stop fighting, and — maybe — plead with the terrorists to be nice and with the rest of us to “understand their point of view.” Which, they will persistently deny, is exactly how Christopher Hitchens described it.
(Hat tip: Instapudit.)
(N.B.: Christopher Hitchens is a Briton currently living in Washington, DC.)
July 12th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Perhaps folks have different reasons for hating us; after all Sadaam and Bin Laden have very
different worldviews (one is basically secular; the other a fundamentalist).
But to think that our sometimes exploitive actions in the Middle East (e. g., propping up
corrupt regimes because they supply us with cheap oil) doesn’t engender a fair amount of
resentment is to put our heads in the sand.
July 14th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
I’m not sure that the difference between Saddam’s being “secular” and bin Laden’s being “fundamentalist” is all that important. Both Saddam’s Baathist ideology and bin Laden’s “Islamist” ideology both stem from the same Arab-nationalist, fascist roots: Baathism is the version developed by Michel Aflaq (as a Greek Orthodox Christian in an overwhelmingly Muslim society, his version is naturally secular). Bin Laden’s ideology (what some call “Islamism”) is the version developed by Sayyid Qutb, one of the founders, along with Hasan al-Banna, of the (Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood. Basically, Aflaq grafted fascism onto Arab nationalism , and Qutb grafted it onto fundamentalist, Wahhabi-style Islam. Although Qutb was not technically a Wahhabi, his views were close enough to theirs that the Muslim Brotherhood is considered Wahhabi today, and Qutb’s views survive mostly in Wahabbi-dominated countries (like Saudi Arabia) and organizations.
Both Aflaq and Qutb (along with Haj Amim al-Husseini) supported Hitler during WWII and supported attacks on British interests in the Middle East. Their philosphy is very similar, except the replace Hitler’s “Aryans” at the top of the racial ladder with Arabs (Baathism) or fundamentalist Muslims of whatever nationality (Wahhabism).
They are two sides of the same coin — just as there were atheist Nazis (Hitler), Catholic Nazis (Goebbels), and Lutheran Nazis (Hess), the important thing to the rest of the world is that they are all Nazis. Likewise, there are secular Islamofascists (Saddam, Assad) and fundamentalist Islamofascists (Bin Laden, Hamas), they are all still Islamofascists.