The Britain Plot: "Why Do They Hate Us?"

Seems that the "Why do they hate us?" discussion is not over:

Tom Friedman's column on American Independence Day argues, "The Middle East: Now playing at a theater near you." (i.e., "theater" as in war zone, not the cineplex--s.m.)

Writing about the latest terror incidents in Britain--"six blocks from my hotel"--Friedman says, "this movie gets more confusing every time you watch it...these incidents are scattered...crazy." He goes on, "In the past few years, hundreds of Muslims have committed suicide amid innocent civilians--without making any concrete political demands and without generating any vigorous, sustained condemnation in the Muslim world."

In Friedman's view, two trends are at work: Muslims are lashing out over their feelings of humiliation, and this lashing out is proliferating around the world thanks to the Internet and cell phones. "Little terror groups [are] sprouting everywhere," he says. "Everyone now has a starter kit...new recruits just keep sprouting...In England, seven out of the eight people detained in the latest plot are Muslim doctors or medical students."

"Humiliation," Friedman explains, is "driving Muslim males, particularly edcuated ones, into these acts of extreme, expressive violence." Why do they feel humiliated? Because their faith, which Friedman says they regard as God 3.0, isn't stacking up to Christianity (God 2.0) or Judaism (God 1.0). "While they were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating system," Friedman explains, "every day they’re confronted with the reality that people living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under Islam." Friedman quotes a figurative Muslim exclaiming, "How could this be? Who did this to us? The Crusaders! The Jews! The West!"

"It can never be something that they failed to learn, adapt to or build," Friedman laments, arguing that "a death cult has taken root in the bosom of [Islam], feeding off it like a cancerous tumor." Eleven paragraphs down into his argument, Friedman notes, "Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. But it's been widely noted that virtually all suicide terrorists today are Muslims."

Friedman hypes the threat. His generalizations seem to jibe with the big headlines generated by extremist attacks. That's part of the rationale extremists use in promoting sensational attacks. Let's keep our heads and remember that the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are not extremists. Bin Ladenism is an extreme fringe phenomenon, even among fundamentalist Muslims. Muslims involved in terrorism also tend overwhelmingly to be Arabs, which make up a quarter of the global Muslim population.

Humiliation plays a part, but alone it is a simplistic if not obscurantist explanation. Taking the issue of humiliation on its own, I doubt that Muslim humiliation has much to do with comparing Western and Islamic GDPs. I don't think Muslims care too much that the West invents more iPods and creates hit TV shows like American Idol. It has far more to do with feelings that the West has kept a colonialist boot on the Muslim world.

Looking at statistics, I reckon that Arab Muslim terrorism has less to do with humiliation than to do with resisting real or perceived foreign occupations and avenging the real or perceived dishonor associated with being controlled by alien forces. I don't think there's much disagreement that the trend in suicide bombing was invented by Iranian-backed Hizballah guerrillas avenging the U.S.-aided 22-year Israeli occupation of Lebanon. The tactic was later picked up by Hamas against the Israelis and Sunni jihadists against the U.S. in Iraq. Suicide bombings by jihadists inside Iraq in the last four years total more than 700, by far the worst spree of suicide bombing in recent history, seven times the number of Hamas attacks against Israel in the last decade. When Friedman says "in the past few years, hundreds of Muslims have committed suicide amid innocent civilians," he neglects to mention that this happened in Iraq. Friedman is incorrect when he immediately goes on to say the attackers acted "without making any concrete political demands." I don't know if Friedman's looking for a written manifesto, but the insurgents have made their agenda pretty clear, and a big part of it is defeating the Americans in Iraq.

There is in fact widespread condemnation of terrorism in the Islamic world, including the Arab part of it. Friedman could rightly quibble that it is not "vigorous" or "sustained." That's debatable, but part of the problem for Arab political and social leaders is differentiating between "terrorists" and "freedom fighters". Many feel that fighting Israeli or American occupation is their right, by any methods. That's also debatable, but even if they have reservations about that "right," or the methods, they may be concerned about losing their credibility if it appears they are quislings supporting occupation. You can nonetheless condemn such Muslims for being morally ambivalent--and, alas, Muslims don't have a corner on that market.

I agree with Friedman that there is a "death cult," not in the "bosom" of Islam, but exploiting Islam for mass murder. I also agree that Muslim leaders need to do more, everything they can think of, to prevent the cult from growing. Besides the tragic deaths it has caused, it has, as Friedman's views indicate, tainted Muslims in the eyes of many non-Muslims. Certainly part of the solution is for all of us to learn the reasons for the extremism--and they are complex, not simplistic--and work together to address them.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo