They Hate Us for Our Freedoms

They Hate Us for Our Freedoms — HUSSEIN ABOUBAKR

"On the evening of September 11, 2001, Cairo time, I watched on TV as Americans were being terrorized by the sight of two towers set to blaze. The following weeks, the atmosphere around me in Muslim Egypt was that of joyous festivities. My parents, my teachers, and my imams were all pleased by the well-deserved punishment Allah brought upon the infidels. TVs broadcasted images of people across the Muslim world expressing joy, some even handed out candy in the Palestinian Territories (Jordanians reportedly also did). As a child, I rejoiced like all the adults, as an adult I agonize over the memory. Why did my parents and my school teachers, who are not terrorists nor are they violent people, have no moral objection to such terrorism against Americans? Why did we hate them? The answer lies in the history of the deadly alliance between Saudi money and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and its toxic impact on Arab culture...

To find the origin of contempt held in the collective Muslim loathing ofthe west, one needs to understand the Muslim view of western civilization as well as history itself. To understand the former, one need not turn but to the main theologian of militant Islamism, Sayyed Qutb himself. Qutb spent two years in the United States between 1948 and 1950. His writings about that period are characterized by deep resentment and a very negative view of the United States. For Qutb, America was the ultimate personification of western decadence and western moral degeneracy. The lack of traditional sexual morality and the near absolutism of freedom of speech were among his chief complaints, complaints which are still echoed today by the majority of Muslim scholars. American materialism and emphasis on individual liberty are seen, sometimes legitimately, as a threat to the social cohesion, spiritual well being, family structure, and collectivism of Muslim societies. This is the truest meaning of the iconic George Bush line “They hate us for our freedoms.” In this sense, the hatred for America is not for what it does, but for what it is.

The Muslim view of history is of no less importance. Historical awareness in the Muslim world is much deeper and much more important than it is in the western world. References to early and ancient history are very common in public discourse. Being a product of the Egyptian state curriculum, I received instruction in a painfully detailed fashion in the history of the crusades as well as imperialism. In Muslim collective consciousness, the medieval hostility of the crusades was transferred unto European colonialism, and later unto American hegemony. The American world order is seen as nothing but the continuity of the historical rivalry between the House of Islam and the House of War as it appears from the referring to Americans as “crusaders” in Islamist literature. The first Iraq war, for example, is viewed by Americans as an American intervention on behalf of a Muslim nation to protect it against the aggression of Sadam Hussein. However, in the Muslim world, it is generally viewed as  Christian aggression on a Muslim nation. This is the most problematic aspect in the relationship between the west and the Muslim world as it is very poorly understood by the west.

The rise of nation-states in the Muslim world in the 20th century is generally viewed in the west as the end of the old world order, but this superficial change is yet to penetrate into Muslim collective consciousness. There is no international organization of protestant cooperation in which the state leaders of the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, and the US meet to express solidarity. There are no summits for Hindu or Buddhist nations. There is no Catholic world league. There are, however, Muslim ones. Christian or Catholic nations do not try to act as a bloc in the different bodies in the UN, Muslim countries do. The Muslim world is profoundly Muslim in a way the western world stopped being Christian. Islam in this sense serves not just as a religion, but as a pan-Islamic identity that sees the world through a binary prism.

This very strong sense of identity also generates one of the most profound grievances against the west which were in their totality incurred by the United States as the current “leader of the infidel world.” In a bin Laden tape released in October 2001, he mentioned the “humiliation and disgrace” Islam has been suffering for the past 80 years. Westerners were clueless but the average Muslim listener immediately picked up on the reference; the end of the historical Islamic Caliphate and the division of the Muslim world into nation-states by European powers... A sense of collective victimhood combined with cultural religious adherence -- even without religious Islamic education, led to the Arab world’s celebrations on September 11, 2001. Sadly, in a world where entire societies are opposed to critical thought, such tragedies are perceived through a distorted lens, in which the most evil of actions can be interpreted as heroic."