What is the cause of hatred in the Islamic world towards the US and the West?

[Mr Rayon]

Taking an informed and objective stance, why is there hatred in the Islamic world towards the US and the West? Also, when it comes to the Israeli/Palistinean conflicts, who exactly are the "bad guys"? I've heard conflicting reports from everywhere and just wanted to know what everyone here thinks. I've also heard from other sources saying that by certain actions taken by the US in past they have in effect supported global terror, but I don't really know what this means exactly or what war crimes (if any) the US and the West has done in order to make this happen. Anyway, I've recently gained a bit of interest in the matter and just wanted to get a better understanding of global problems such as this. It seems as though all these issues have been around since long before I was born and it's hard to keep up with what's going on and I guess to take an objective and informed stance.

[admrpeter]

Poverty, extreme poverty is one, second religious differences in marriage and family

[Mr Rayon]

Poverty, extreme poverty is one, second religious differences in marriage and family

 

Poverty? So, jealousy towards the more properous countries? And do you think you could elaborate further on this? I've lived in Muslim countries in the past and looking at marriage differences from a psychological perspective, I don't think it would cause much hatred towards the US as well as the West. Generally it is accepted by many Islamic scholars that Muslim men are allowed to have one, two, three or even four wives if they can treat them all equally. But I think this is all in the interpretation of the Qu'ran and I'm not sure whether it actually endoreses such things as some of the passages are kryptic while others are simple and it's sometimes hard to distinguish which is which hence what a particular passage really means. I don't think Muslim men are allowed to have anymore wives than four but with increasing Western pressure it seems as though less and less Muslim men are having multiple wives. And I don't think arranged marriages by Muslims could make any people angry. Every culture/religion has their own sets of ideals/values who are we to say that these are wrong? How are we to say that in America it is immoral for them to have the death penalty?

 

admrpeter, but why would these reasons you have stated cause hatred in the Islamic world to the rest of the world? It doesn't make sense.

Edited January 8, 2011 by Voltman

[Mr Skeptic]

There's a lot of tension and conflict between the Islamic world and America because [we] believe in the correct god and [they] worship the wrong one. And for those who don't really care about religion, that still carries over a bit because on average [they] mistrust and don't like [us], and vice versa. And it's not just religion, we also have different culture. And America in particular likes to meddle in other people's business, especially when other people have oil. And then America put the Taliban in power so they could kick the Russian's sorry asses for us, which probably wasn't a good idea but then we didn't want to have open conflict either. And of course the media loves the whole thing -- they try to make things as controversial as possible. And then there's the suicide bombers which we associate with Islam and are terrified of, even though they have not managed to kill more people than peanuts do.

 

I don't think poverty and jealousy are too much of an issue directly, but indirectly it matters because it makes people more desperate. Then again, so does polygamy, which puts a whole new meaning to "all the good ones are taken". Anyhow, it is easier to convince desperate people to do desperate things.

[Marat]

Since thinking in the West is informed by all the complex and subtle influences of relativism, skepticism, and historicism, causing all intellectual commitments to be lightly and flexibly held, our supple style of thinking represents an existential threat to the simple self-certainties of any belief system relying on some ancient book for all its 'absolute truths,' and so for this reason we are inevitably in conflict with Islam. I think the recent return in Islam to more absolutist forms is a reaction to its fear of the more sophisticated style of analysis and the tentative nature of all belief in the West, and as Islam becomes more absolutist in its defensive response, it also comes to look more antique, anachronistic, and foolish in its implicit debate with modern thought, which in turn makes it more paranoic, in a vicious spiral which can only ultimately be resolved by hurling a bomb at ideas they can't cope with intellectually.

 

As to the other question about the merits of the positions of Israel and its enemies, obviously the Israeli claim to statehood in someone else's home is ridiculous. Imagine if someone came into your house brandishing a 3000 year old book full of gods, monsters, and other obvious superstitions and said that that book proved that he owned your house, so would you please leave immediately! There is absolutely no merit to the argument that the Old Testament can count in international law as a basis for the sovereign claims of the Israeli state to that territory, especially when it drove the endemic population out and displaced them from their land ownership claims by force. The argument that Israel needed some special exemption from normal international law because the Jews needed a homeland after the Holocaust is also ridiculous, since Paraguay was already willing to provide them with their own state from its own vacant territory, so they had a safe place to go without displacing anyone.

[Sisyphus]

I think the situation is a lot more complicated than just "the Islamic world hates the West." For example, Saudi Arabia, which is a nation is about as Islamic as they come, is also the single most loyal ally of the United States. It's also the original home of Osama Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers. Several of my coworkers are devout Muslim and patriotic Americans. Yet immigration from Islamic countries to the West is a major source of culture clash and tension. Etc., etc.

 

I don't pretend to understand all the various factors, social and historical, that have lead to the current tension, but I will say that I think looking at poverty is a good start. (Not that it's as simple as "jealousy.") It seems like wealth and anti-Western sentiment have a pretty strong inverse correlation within the Islamic world.

[Pangloss]

As to the other question about the merits of the positions of Israel and its enemies, obviously the Israeli claim to statehood in someone else's home is ridiculous.

 

You mean the overwhelming, international claim of Israeli statehood.

 

But isn't it just as ridiculous to claim that it's someone else's home? Whose home was it 15,000 years ago? All those claims are nonsense if you just go back far enough. So you might as well draw a line at some point in time and try to move forward.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Are we trying to judge their reasons, or just elucidate them?

 

I'd imagine that much of the hatred stems from perceived Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. Here's a writeup by a Brown University professor:

 

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/publications/Oppose.htm

[Moontanman]

If Israel has the right to kick people out of their homes due to 3000 year old claims then my people have a much more recent claim on the territory the USA took from us by some pretty horrible methods. Being approved by the world doesn't put Israel on a higher moral ground than my people, it just gives them the authority of power, not morals. (religion has nothing to do with morals to begin with and the number of people who believe something doesn't make it correct) Just because a lot of people say Israel can morally kick people out of their homes doesn't give them the moral right to do that. I don't see the Cherokee taking back the Appalachian mountains anytime soon no matter who claims it's ok... and yes they killed millions of us too... I have nothing against Israel or it's people but morally how can what they did be justified?

Edited January 8, 2011 by Moontanman

[Marat]

The Israelis are the ones who were trying to propel 20th century claims to statehood on arguments going to back to ancient claims. The more immediate historical situation was that the Ottoman Empire had legal sovereignty over its province of Palestine, whose population was predominantly Arab (not Turkish, as the Ottomans were), with a small Jewish minority whose numbers had been growing since the Zionist movement got going in the 1880s. Britain took that province of the Ottoman Empire as a colonial prize for having defeated them in World War I, but made inconsistent promises to both Jews and Arabs that they might get the territory for behaving well during World War II, when the Nazis made an appeal to the Islamic peoples to revolt against their British masters, which led to some active combat in the British colony of Iraq in 1941, and encouraged additional resistance against the Russian and British invasion of Iran in 1941.

 

When the British left Palestine and the Jewish state was proclaimed, the struggle between Jewish and Arab populations in the resulting power vacuum brought the Israeli state into existence by ethnic cleansing of the majority Arab population, which had lived in the area since before the first Jews had arrived in the initial Jewish invasion sponsored by Moses. These semitic peoples were of course culturally distinct from modern Arabs, and lacked their Islamic identity until the 7th century, so they really can't ground a claim that the 'Arabs were there first.' But still, in 1948 the territory had a majority Arab population which was violently expelled, and that can hardly constitute a moral or legal basis for a new state coming into existence.

 

As for Saudi Arabia being pro-Western, its more accurate to say that its unpopular ruling dynasty is pro-Western because it is propped up by the United States, but if that American puppet were to lose power and democratic forces were to triumph in Saudi Arabia, then it would probably become a fanatical, Western-hating, extremist Islamic state.

[Pangloss]

The Israelis are the ones who were trying to propel 20th century claims to statehood on arguments going to back to ancient claims.

 

They were NOT the only ones making that argument, but more to the point, what you implied in your previous post is that they lied to authorities about being the property owner in order to steal it from its rightful owners. This is a distortion of both arguments and facts.

[Moontanman]

They were NOT the only ones making that argument, but more to the point, what you implied in your previous post is that they lied to authorities about being the property owner in order to steal it from its rightful owners. This is a distortion of both arguments and facts.

 

No lies were told, they simply kicked people out because they could, it's a well established part of human interactions, the more powerful get the spoils. I can live with that, i see no reason to expect my people to get their lands back and I see no reason for Israel to leave and give Palestine back to the Arabs or who ever but don't try to say they had some sort of contract with God that gave them the right to take that land, they did it the old fashioned way, power and resolve.

[Pangloss]

No lies were told, they simply kicked people out because they could, it's a well established part of human interactions, the more powerful get the spoils. I can live with that, i see no reason to expect my people to get their lands back and I see no reason for Israel to leave and give Palestine back to the Arabs or who ever but don't try to say they had some sort of contract with God that gave them the right to take that land, they did it the old fashioned way, power and resolve.

 

That's clear, and it was two generations ago, amidst decades of postwar line-drawing all over the Middle East. There's a reason they don't call it the Ottoman Empire anymore.

 

Your comparison with the Cherokee was interesting.

[Marat]

It's interesting that many people now seem to accept that Israel has a kind of right of prescription/adverse possession because of its 60 years plus of occupation of the land where the Palestinians used to live, but just don't try that when discussing Native land claims in North America!

[Moontanman]

The Cherokee got the shitty end of the stick for sure as did all Native Americans, the Cherokee's story is especially poignant because they were considered a civilized nation, they had treaties with the USA, the Cherokee were not some separatist group that was threatening the government of the US. The Cherokee had been participating in the life style of the USA for quite some time, they had pretty much converted to western life styles unlike the plains "Indians" who were nomads who's life style was foreign to the western ideas of life, the Cherokee had houses farms and villages but as was par for the course no treaty could protect the weaker party if the stronger doesn't think of them as human beings.

[CaptainPanic]

What is the cause of hatred in the Islamic world towards the US and the West?

Says who?

 

Muslim fundamentalists have a hatred of anything and anyone who doesn't accept their rules. They just as happily attack Mumbai (which is in India, and has a largely Hindu population).

 

Most victims of the Muslim fundamentalists are their own countrymen and women, who are Muslims.

 

Honestly... I strongly believe that it's a complete myth that Muslims have something against us. I am afraid that the opposite is true: a large group (right wing) in the Western world has something against Islam... and therefore they spread these stories. And the people who really have something against us have something against almost everybody.

 

The world needed an enemy after the Commies were defeated. And after searching long and hard, someone found some fundamentalists who said that everything was evil. That was twisted into "The West is Evil"... and Voila... we have a new enemy.

 

-------------

On a sidenote, related to the Israel/Palestine problem... here's why it's great to be Dutch.

Nobody claims that our land was theirs... because we made it ourselves, and we have the

to prove it.

-------------

 

... But let this intermezzo not distract you from the main topic, which is why we seem to believe that Muslims all hate us, and why that thought makes us all hate Muslims, and/or who is the real owner of the ground which we now call Israel and Palestine.

Edited January 11, 2011 by CaptainPanic

[rigney]

I'm not sure if we are better off for having helped those middle eastern countries defeat the Russians? Perhaps we would have been better off to have let the Russians win? Don't believe there has been a Russian soldier killed in any of the mentioned countries over the past fifteen/twenty years or so. Heck,! I don't think they're even mad at the Russian's anymore? Of course they still have one of the bad guys, "U.S."

 

Picked this out of CaptainPanic's link.

http://www.brown.edu...ions/Oppose.htm

 

The United States became the sole representative of the West after 1972, when Great Britain, poor and humbled, could no longer afford to maintain a full military force in the region. Anxious to protect oil supplies from the Soviet Union, Washington propped up the Shah of Iran and the Saudi Arabian government in the ill-fated "Twin Pillars" strategy. This ended with the Iranian revolution, leaving America with a messy patchwork of military and political detritus. When Iran went to war with Iraq, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein to prevent Iran from winning. Anxious about Soviet incursions into Afghanistan, it propped up the Taliban. These two monstrous forces--Saddam and the Taliban--are very much an American creation.

Edited January 11, 2011 by rigney

[ewmon]

why is there hatred in the Islamic world towards the US and the West?

I have heard repeatedly from Muslims themselves that they believe they're born perfect and then corrupted by the evil in the world, and if they can only get rid of the evil (Westerners being a high-grade source of it -- probably because they're wealthy, powerful non-Muslims), then Muslims could return to their previous, original state of perfection. (PS -- Women are evil too.)

[imatfaal]

Although I am an atheist; from a philosophical point of view, I think I prefer the concept that a child is born pure and unadulterated and is thereafter susceptible to corruption rather than a version that says a child is born already damaged and tainted with an original sin and all human failings.

[John Cuthber]

I sometimes wonder what the outcome would have been if, rather than dropping bombs on Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban, the West had dropped food and water supplies.*

 

Ignoring the humanitarian aspects of the choice, food is cheaper.

 

At the time, someone in the West made the decision that the bombs were a better bet.

I wonder why the Afghans (and their brothers in their faith) think that the West is evil?

 

 

* just dropping a little food would have been worse than useless, those with guns would get all of it and the rest of the people would feel even more hard done by. You would need to provide enough to feed the population and then some. That would still have been cheaper. It's not a long term solution but I think it would help with what's called "the battle for hearts and minds".

[Pangloss]

The US participated in humanitarian missions all over the world long before 9/11.

[John Cuthber]

I think it would have been nice if they had carried on just a little longer.

Perhaps more importantly they could have chosen not to add the high explosives to the gift packages. It would still have been cheaper.

 

Incidentally, some people may consider it important that none of the 9/11 hijackers was from Afghanistan. Most were Saudi.

Edited January 11, 2011 by John Cuthber

[Pangloss]

The Taliban wasn't going to cooperate. Ever. Afghanistan's one and only chance for peaceful coexistence in the community of nations is the one you've seen played out over the last ten years. No reasonable analysis, anywhere, has ever provided a path that's more likely to succeed than the one they're on right now.

 

I think your argument makes more sense with regard to Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration should have paid more attention to reports from weapons inspectors than the faulty intelligence he was receiving, and continued to wait.

[Saryctos]

Incidentally, some people may consider it important that none of the 9/11 hijackers was from Afghanistan. Most were Saudi.

Some people, like Osama bin Laden, most certainly considered it important.

[CaptainPanic]

Some people, like Osama bin Laden, most certainly considered it important.

How would you know what Osama bin Laden thinks, when there is almost no news about him, and even the CIA and the US Army cannot find him?

 

Imho, this is exactly the problem with the world at the moment (and has always been the problem): We seem to know exactly what the other people think, and what they want, and nobody considers that highly unlikely.

 

These people live on the other side of the world, and have different cultures and languages. Everything we know about them is at best second hand information.