The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

What is out of the ordinary about that? Nothing, other than the fact that the school is named for Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist who participated in a bus hijacking in 1978 that left 36 Israelis and an American photographer (Gail Ruban) dead. One would think that in the post-Sept. 11 world, taxpayer funds would not be used to support institutions that glori- fy the memory of terrorists. Shane Myers American Citizen Services Deputy U.S. Consulate General Guadalajara Muslims and Modernization David Timmins’ letter to the edi- tor, “Remembering History”? and Richard McKee’s review of Bernard Lewis’s book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle East Response ( FSJ , November), offer explanations for Islamic hostility toward America and the West. Timmins argues that Western toler- ance and appeasement encourage our “sworn enemies,” while McKee notes as fact “the pervasive influence of Western societies and states on the Middle East.” The underlying cause, however, is neither. The hatred that breeds Islamic terrorism against America and the West is rooted in perceived historical griev- ances against the West. Many people condemn terrorist attacks without questioning these his- torical grievances. Left unchallenged, however, this portrayal of the Muslim as victim of the West appears to legit- imize a false premise that justifies the sympathetic milieu in which anti- Western rhetoric and actions flourish. To continue to blame the West for its ills simply serves to divert the Muslim world from recognizing that much of its failure to come to terms with modernity is inherent in its own histo- ry and culture. The Crusades, beginning in 1096, were not the opening shot of Western imperialism against the Muslim World that they are often portrayed to be. Rather, they were an attempt to retake for Christendom the formerly Byzantine Christian areas of the Near East, including Jerusalem, that by 640 had been conquered by invading Muslim armies. If any opening shot of imperialism occurred, it was in the seventh cen- tury when invading Arab armies forcibly incorporated Christian pop- ulations into a growing Muslim Empire. A review of history reveals that, more often than not, it has been the West under assault by Islam. By the ninth century, the armies of Islam had conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Spain, Sicily, and part of the Italian mainland, threatening Naples and Rome. Reading some of the so- called post-colonial literature today, one would never guess that for more than four centuries (1453-1918), a large part of the Arab world itself was subjected to the imperialism and colonialism of Islamic brethren, the Ottoman Turks. By the 16th century, the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled not only most of the Arab world, but also today’s Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, the Crimea, all lands of the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Cyprus, and Hungary. Twice, in 1529 and 1683, Islamic armies laid siege to Vienna. Despotic in nature, the Ottomans were imitators at best. As the West began to increase its knowledge, modernize the design and production of naval vessels and armaments, and refine manufactur- ing techniques, the Ottoman world remained static. This, combined with the fact that Islam has never experienced a movement equiva- lent to the Western Enlightenment and does not recognize as separate and distinct the secular and reli- gious realms, resulted in Islam’s refusal to accept the printing press. It was considered a sacrilege to use the sacred language of the Qur’an for such secular purposes, and for centuries Ottoman sultans banned printing in Arabic or Turkish. This had the unsurprising effect of cut- ting the Islamic world off from many advances in learning. While the West continued to advance, the Arabs and all other subjects of the Ottomans were vic- tims of an Islamic — not Western — empire’s bureaucracy, regula- tions, corruption, and consequent failure to modernize, leaving them ill-equipped to meet the Western challenge when it came. Comp- ared to the Islamic Ottoman legacy, the British and French post-World War I League of Nations’ mandates in the Arab world were short-lived and hardly the impediments to modernization they are portrayed to be. The Muslim world has a difficult time institutionalizing moderniza- tion due to obstacles inherent in Islamic culture itself. After the Muslim Empire’s zenith, from the ninth to the 12th centuries, it began to fall into eclipse. Various theologi- cal systems emerged that shared a determinist and authoritarian out- look, denying causality as an expla- nation of natural phenomena. All was ascribed to the will of God. This had the effect of ending critical thought and research. Nowhere are the impediments to modernization inherent in Islam and its interpretations more apparent than in its pronouncements regard- ing women. It is said that women are protected under Islam, but too often it is the protection afforded the caged. Women may inherit only 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 L E T T E R S