Islam’s War of Words

“The United States is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world.” The message gets repeated so often that one forgets its perversity. Yet there it is: Americas effort to root out terrorists responsible for some 5,000 deaths in New York and Washington and its attacks on those who harbor these terrorists is understood by millions of Muslims to be a profound affront to the realm of Islam, another instance of Americas wicked, global ambitions.

Granted, American support for Israel has frequently put the U.S. and the Muslim world at odds over the last 50 years. But consider some other facts: the U.S. has sent its military into action three times in the last decade in part, at least, to protect Muslims. In the Gulf War, the U.S. and its allies liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation and safeguarded Saudi Arabia from invasion. In the Balkans, America led NATO to stop Serb aggression and ended genocidal killing of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Today, the U.S. underwrites Egyptian military and economic security with $2 billion a year. And though it may have failed to prevent the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, the U.S. has given more aid than any other donor. But any Western policymaker who thinks that will buy goodwill with large numbers of Muslims — or that the rapid reaction press centers set up in the U.S. and London to rebut Taliban propaganda will make much of a difference — has his sights fixed on a mirage.

For proof, listen to Radwa Abdallah, a university student who, sitting in a McDonalds in Cairo, told a Wall Street Journal reporter that when she heard about the carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, “Everyone celebrated. People honked in the streets, cheering that finally America got what it truly deserved.”

Those post-Sept. 11 sentiments echo ones heard in dozens of conversations in Egypt and Pakistan earlier this year. The U.S. didnt help Muslims in the Balkans — it actually let the Serbs continue the slaughter. The U.S. fought the Gulf War solely to protect its oil, strengthen its foothold in the region and further oppress Islam. And of course, the U.S., by supporting Israel, has an ocean of Muslim blood on its hands. (Never mind that American pressure led Israel to make an unprecedented peace offer to the Palestinians, even putting the future of Jerusalem on the table — an offer Yasser Arafat spurned.)

The West and the Islamic world coexist on the same planet but inhabit different universes. This is not just America and its allies stumbling on the public relations front. Rather, it is the harvest of decades in which the press in Islamic countries spent less ink on the news than on spinning a world view in which the U.S. and Israel conspire to undo Muslims the world over. How else to explain Ahmad Ragab, in the Egyptian government-backed daily Al-Akhbar, equating Sept. 11 with the then-impending U.S. strikes on Afghanistan: “The U.S. and terrorism suffuse a foul atmosphere throughout the world. The smiles have disappeared from the faces of the peoples, who wait, across the world, for the disaster that either terrorists or the U.S. will visit upon them. The U.S. has become like the terrorists.”

Or commentator Ali Al-Sayyed of the government-owned Al-Ahram Al-Arabi weekly, who wrote, “For many long years, America made many peoples in the world cry. It was always [America] that carried out the acts; now, acts are being carried out [against] it. A cook who concocts poison must one day also taste that poison!”

The anti-Americanism spewed from publications like these isnt without purpose. By allowing the press to fulminate about an external enemy, undemocratic, often repressive regimes deflect criticism from themselves. Arab journalists know that attacking a minister for corruption or a regime for stifling dissent will land them out of job — or worse. But by focusing on a demon beyond their borders, they create a shared narrative and aggrieved solidarity.

At meeting after meeting, American Presidents and Secretaries of State would raise the issue of anti-American and anti-Semitic material in the Islamic worlds press. But they seldom made heavy weather about this kind of garbage, standing dutifully by while their visitors spoke disingenuously about their countrys free press. The understanding was that these moderate regimes would deliver on Americas top concerns, support for the Middle East peace process and regional security. In the end, it was a doomed bargain. Moderate Arab regimes — Jordan excepted — did little to support the peace, and some, like Egypt, even undermined it at times. All the West has to show for its efforts is a world of hatred.

Yes, America and its friends need to push leaders in the Islamic world to rein in their press. Western diplomats and political leaders need to give more interviews and insist that their words not be twisted. But no one should believe change will come quickly. It will take years of demolition to grind down the mountain of mass-produced hatred that years built.