The Roots Of Muslim Anger At America

By Peter Certo,
July 8, 2011
Courtesy Of "Foreign Policy In Focus"

With nearly a decade under its belt in the so-called war on terror, the United States remains mired in Afghanistan, lingers on in Iraq, and is currently expanding its largely unacknowledged drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and beyond. And what to show for it? Regimes have been changed, certainly. Osama bin Laden is dead, and the al-Qaeda base of operations he established in Afghanistan has been essentially dismantled.

But these gains, of course, have come at a tremendous cost – one that outruns our domestic problems and the more immediate quagmires of our present theaters of conflict.

In his new book, Feeling Betrayed: The Roots of Muslim Anger at America, political psychologist and public opinion expert Steven Kull suggests that the reservoir of Muslim discontent with U.S. foreign policy remains as deep as it ever was. He argues that al-Qaeda, like any terrorist group, is able to operate in part because it can draw on a culture of support from within its broader community. Although they may have sharp qualms about al-Qaeda’s methods and its extreme form of Islam, many Muslims in Muslim-majority countries are drawn to defend the group’s resistance to the United States. This provides al-Qaeda with a “culture of violence,” to borrow a term from sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer, from which to draw recruits, acceptance, and sympathy.

To uncover the source of this anger, Kull conducted in-depth surveys in 11 Muslim-majority countries over several years and held focus groups in several others. Analyzing these results along with data from other surveys, he provides perhaps the most detailed, empirical exploration of “the roots of Muslim anger” to date.

 In so doing, Kull blots out the largely anecdotal evidence and arbitrary line drawing underpinning “clash of civilizations” explanations for international hostilities.

Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, according to Kull’s data, are as favorably inclined toward democracy as virtually anyone else in the world. Similarly, with certain qualifications, they hold positive attitudes toward human rights, free expression, religious freedom, and the role of women – orientations that are more or less comparable to attitudes elsewhere. They are also generally supportive of a liberal international order where states are constrained by norms of human rights and world democracy, though the perception of the United Nations as a tool of the United States has at times negatively impacted its favorability.

At the same time, although attracted to “Western” political norms and cultural exports, Muslims also tend to worry about being overwhelmed by them. When coupled with aggressive U.S. foreign policy in the region, American influence assumes a more menacing guise. Most Muslims already believe U.S. Middle East policy is largely geared to protect U.S. access to oil and Israel. But they also see an effort to impose a secular, even Christian, order on Islamic countries. On this account, Kull notes that there remains widespread support in the Muslim world for Sharia-inspired political systems. He takes pains to note that Muslims generally see Islamism and democracy as fully compatible, so the perception that the United States is hostile to Islam becomes a point of contention for Islamists and Muslim liberals alike.

According to Kull, Muslims see the United States as an insincere promulgator of liberal values. While America advocates liberal constraints on other countries, it behaves as though it is itself uniquely unconstrained. On issues of religion, war, and politics, Kull’s surveys and focus groups repeatedly uncover accusations that the United States has betrayed its core principles.

Importantly, most Muslims in majority-Muslim countries deplore al-Qaeda’s use of violence against civilians, and few would desire a society informed by al-Qaeda’s particular Islamic norms. Nonetheless, many of al-Qaeda’s goals – including especially an Islamic-influenced society and removal of U.S. troops from Muslim countries – poll exceptionally well across countries. Al-Qaeda may be seen as a threat, but the threat from the United States is seen as more existential, immediate, and salient.

Kull draws skillfully on his background as a psychologist. What is often viewed in the West as a “clash of civilizations,” he says, is really an internal conflict within the Muslim world, perhaps not dissimilar from the secular-religious culture wars that have played out in the United States and Europe for ages. The problem is that the United States is seen as placing its finger on the scale, which “externalizes” the conflict and obscures its contours. Rather than a debate within Muslim countries, it becomes a rivalry between the United States and Muslims, and perhaps Islam itself. This discredits Muslim secularists and draws attention away from those aspects of al-Qaeda and other groups that unaffiliated Muslims would normally find most distasteful.

The answer, Kull says, is for the United States “to extract itself from the externalized conflict as much as possible.” He notes that merely cosmetic and rhetorical adjustments will not suffice. President Obama’s favorability ratings in most Islamic countries, after all, are relatively low.

At the level of rhetoric, Kull recommends that the United States renew its commitment to liberal principles, openly renounce a right to Middle Eastern oil, emphasize distinctions between itself and Israel, and refrain from its nasty habit of making veiled threats.  More substantively, he says that the United States should withdraw its troops from the Persian Gulf, where they provide little security advantage and serve only to inflame public opinion. Such a withdrawal should parallel a renewed commitment to extricating the United States from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps most importantly, citing unfortunate precedents from Algeria, Palestine, and Egypt – where the United States transparently backed off its support for free elections after Islamist parties performed well in them – Kull says the United States must accept the participation of moderate (i.e., nonviolent) Islamist political parties in open systems. To resist them merely on account of their Islamism, he argues, is to appear anti-Islamic – and to once more prevent Muslim voting publics from sorting out their ideas about society on their own. Open Islamist participation can only marginalize the non-democratic forces of al-Qaeda.

Kull conducted his studies before the monumental uprisings across the Arab world. The cases of Egypt and Tunisia will prove important laboratories for testing U.S. commitment to democracy in a rapidly changing region. Let’s hope someone in Washington is paying attention to what Muslims are saying and what Steven Kull is reporting.

Peter Certo is a research assistant with Foreign Policy In Focus.

recommended citation:

Peter Certo, "Review: The Roots of Muslim Anger at America" (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 8, 2011)

Even Alleged Terrorists Have Authentic Grievances

From Sirhan To Bin Laden: U.S. Was Warned About Nakba

By Dallas Darling
Courtesy Of "World News Network"

Even alleged terrorists have authentic grievances, obvious truths that cannot be denied in regards to state-sponsored terrorism. This ancient certainty was again revealed when Israeli soldiers shot and massacred over twenty Palestinian protesters and wounded hundreds more. Their crime was commemorating the Nakba, an event when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed or militarily forced to flee their homes while Israel became a new state. The Palestinian protesters, killed alongside steel barricades in Lebanon, and the Occupied Golan Heights and Gaza Strip and West Bank, were not only calling attention to Palestine's Nakba, also known as the Day of Catastrophe and a tragic remembrance which Israel has outlawed and tried to eliminate, but they were also demonstrating on behalf of Palestinian refugees and their right to return to their homelands.

In 1948, when the Truman Administration and much of the United States recognized the creation of Israel even before the United Nations did and immediately provided aid and military support, Palestinian survivors of Deir Yassin were striped naked, loaded onto open trucks and paraded through Jerusalem where they were spat upon, beaten and stoned. The Zionists laughed and clapped as the women had their breasts cut. One passing Palestinian mother quickly pulled her young child away from the horror-filled scene, but not before he cried out, "Momma, look at the blood." His name was Sirhan Sirhan.(1) After assassinating Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and at his trial, Sirhan delivered a grievance, a warning to the United States concerning its unwavering support of Israel at the expense of Palestinian refugees.

"Well, sir, when you move-when you move a whole country," said Sirhan, "a whole people, bodily from their own homes, from their own land, from their businesses, sir, outside their country, and introduce an alien people, sir, into Palestine-the Jews and the Zionists-that is completely wrong, sir, and it is unjust and the Palestinian Arabs didn't do a thing, sir, to justify the way they were treated by the West." He explained how forced relocations and massacres deeply affected him asking, "Where is the justice involved, sir? Where is the love, sir, for fighting for the underdog? Israel is not underdog in the Middle East, sir. It's those refugees that are underdogs. And because they have no way of fighting back, sir, the Jews, sir, the Zionists, just keep beating away at them. Than burned the hell out of me."(2)

In his final audiotape and just before his assassination, Osama bin Laden warned the United States and Americans that they would not live in safety until the Palestinians lived in security. A sickly and pale-looking bin Laden declared, "America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity." Like Sirhan, bin Laden was thinking back to 1982 when he witnessed the United States and its warships bombing, killing, and wounding many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon while other fled in terror. In "The Towers Of Lebanon," bin Laden wrote, "I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred. All over the place, houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing, crushing their residents, while bombs rained down mercilessly on our homes."(3)

And like Sirhan, bin Laden wondered how the "whole world" could hear and see what had happened but still do nothing. In another letter, this one entitled "To The Americans," bin Laden explains why he is fighting the United States and its military and what he wants. The very first reason he expresses is: "Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. You attacked us in Palestine."(4) According to bin Laden, "Palestine, which has foundered under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction, and devastation...The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally avenged."(5)

The United States and Americans must someday realize that Arab Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone; and their peaceful protesters slaughtered by Israeli soldiers do not die alone.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(Note: While abhorring the violent acts committed by both Sirhan and bin Laden, Palestinians should be commended for their nonviolent Intifada uprisings. Also, to this day Sirhan claims to have no memory of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Some speculate that it might have been a Central Intelligence Agency mind control experiment-MKULTRA-that went wrong.)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)

(1) Smith, Michael K. Portraits of Empire: Unmasking Imperil Illusions from the "American Century" to the "War on Terror." Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press: 2003., p. 32.

(2) Ibid., p. 137.

(3) Lawrence, Bruce, Messages To The World: The Statements Of Osama Bin Laden. New York, New York: Verso Publishers., p. 239.

(4) Ibid., p. 240.