The Roots of Resentment

Erik Arnold

 

"The strongest remaining barrier to American music, television, and film is Islamic fundamentalism. In the Khomeini era  in Iran American cultural products were the supreme symbols of satanic decadence. The more fanatical Iranian and Saudi authorities became in  their attempts to purify their traditional cultures, the more people were drawn  to forbidden music and film."

 

(Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh, Global  Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, 1994, pg 140.)

 

The above passage is an apt summation of the current dilemma confronting the West in its dealings with the Muslim world; it is indicative of a mindset which  views the relations between states in apocalyptic, rather than merely political, terms. That is why the current approach to the Arab-Israeli situation has failed, and will continue to do so, unless this fact is understood. Hatred towards Israel is only a small part of a much deeper problem.

 

The roots of the West's modern confrontation with the Muslim world begin  not in ninteen forty eight, the year of Israel's birth, but rather in 1683,  the year the Turks were driven for the second, and last, time from the gates  of Vienna. The latter year marked the end of the almost continuous Islamic offensive against the Occident, begun in the early Middle Ages,and the  begining of a Western counter offensive which, in both the political and cultural spheres, has lasted to this day. Europeans not only conquered much of the Muslim heartland in the process, but also introduced elements of a dynamic civilization into what was a basically static society.

 

Islam is as much a political system as a religion, it being understood that  that both politics and belief are part and parcel of a larger whole. Therefore, the  occupation of Muslim lands by "non-believers" was bound to cause a shock to the collective system. Ideas such as democracy, nationalism, capitalism, and communism were introduced into what was a traditionally hierarchical, dynastic, and barter based world. The old and the new mixed as the Mohammedan world  was confronted with these new demands.

 

National renewal parties, such as the Ba'athist, were formed by mostly  Western educated men who were openly influenced by the new ideas. Many of  these individuals, such as Ba'ath party founders Michel Aflaq and  Salah-Ud-In Bitar, championed a pan-Arab national revival based as much on  ethno-cultural ties as religion; radical ideas on land distribution  played  a prominent part in Egyptian president Nasser's "Arab Socialist" program.  The non-Arab Islamic states of Turkey and Persia each introduced reforms  with the aim of creating modern secular republics.

 

With few exceptions, this situation has continued unchanged to the  present. Most of the Muslim world has failed to successfully blend Westen technological progress with traditional Islamic civilization; the result  has been either pseudo-revolutionary regimes (such as that of Nasser) which  fail to address the underlying problems, or reactionary governments (such as the Taliban)  which hope to avoid these questions altogether. Even Turkey,  where the idea of a non-sectarian state was maintained for more than half  a century, seems unable to solve this dilemma. Kemal Ataturk's lay nation  is now ruled by an Islamic party whose allegiance to Western ideas seems  doubtful at best.

 

The creation of Israel was merely a tangible symbol  of the Arabo-Muslim  World's impotence in the face of the western challenge. Noted historian  Robert Wistrich recognizes this fact when he writes that "The very existence of Israel is a sign to many  Muslims that "the forces of darkness and immorality, wickedness and apostasy" have gained a temporary ascendency in the world." He also writes "Israel,  Zionism, and the Jews, it is constantly suggested, deliberately seek to destroy  Islam as a religion, to achieve "normalisation" with Egypt through sex, to  promote white slavery, porography, and American television series... that corrupt morals, as part of their cultural assault on the Arabs."

(Antisemitism:  The Longest Hatred, 1991, pgs. 236-237 and pg.258.)

 

Thus Israel is both corrupt in itself and a conduit of corrosive  western (particularly American) cultural values. That is the reason for the savage hatred directed at the Jewish State; suicide bombers and other terrorists are striking at what  the Russian intellectual and anti-Semite Igor Shafarevitch once described as  "the senseless race of industrial society...and the darkness of unbelief."  Thus, Israeli policy is not the issue, what Israel represents, is. That is a  lesson the West would do well to learn.