Muslims and the West

Do They Hate Us for What We Do, or What We Are?:
An important basic question, one that divides the camps neatly. The new Economist comes out strongly for the latter interpretation: Militant Islam despises the West not for what it does but for what it is. If American “imperialism” were the principal bone of contention, why should the United States be so much more despised than the Soviet Union ever was, or than Russia still is, despite the fact that Russia rules over millions of Muslims who would rather not be its subjects? Europe, not America, you might argue, had “imperial” ambitions in the Middle East even after independent states had been created in the region: America crushed those ideas by humiliating Britain and France during the Suez crisis of 1956. Israel notwithstanding, America's supposed crimes of foreign policy in the region are utterly incommensurate with the hatred directed against it. The truth is, America is despised mainly for its success; for the appealing and, critics would say, corrupting alternative it presents to a traditional Islamic way of life; and for the humiliation which many Muslims feel when they consider the comparative failure, in material terms, of their once-mighty civilisation. It helps Arab governments no doubt to blame that failure on outsiders. Plenty of western intellectuals are happy to agree that the economic plight of North Africa and the Middle East is more to do with American oppression than with its real, domestic, causes.