We don't create terrorists, America is not some evil imperialist nation like the Middle East wants to paint it. Terrorists are created for several reasons, most are because of fundamental Islam, some are because of Shi'ite prophecies that say America and Israel must be destroyed before the apocalypse can happen (this is Iran's stance), and others do it because they simply hate the west mainly for being prosperous and not Islamic.
Islamist Fundamentalism - and the acts of violence it often motivates - is one of the most headline-grabbing issues our day. Thus it is no surprise that academics, journalists, and politicians seek out “the reason” for why such a destructive ideology can gain sway over such large populations. In discussing its genesis and reach, most focus on the history of Western Imperialism to explain its rise, and poverty to explain its appeal. A typical approach is found in the reading from Mehran Kamrava: “At least among a significant segment of the population hopelessness and despair abound. Add to this the crushing poverty that pervades most urban centers and a fertile breeding ground emerges for extremist ideologies and movements”, and the “primary fuel for this Islamic fundamentalism has been poverty.” Poverty certainly plays an important role in providing many of the recruits for Islamist Fundamentalist movements, but that in and of itself is insufficient. There is nothing to explain why, a generation ago, “poverty” led to Nationalism, why the wealth-producing free market is decried, or why Communism as an operating system never really took hold.
Others claim an inherently religious background. Islam is seen as a violent faith whose origins are rooted in the concept of Holy War to fulfill an expansionist totalitarian goal. Although he himself does not espouse this theory, eminent Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis provides the beginning of the argument by quoting the relevant hadith: Jihad is your duty under any ruler…He who dies without having taken part in a campaign dies in a kind of unbelief...A day and a night of fighting on the frontier is better than a month of fasting or prayer. Moreover, he argues that, while the Crusade is a relatively late development in Christian theology, Jihad has meant a military campaign for most of Islam’s recorded history. Islamist Fundamentalism is thus a misnomer; these groups are simply following the true tenets of their faith in a historically recognizable manner. Observers point to the language, the leadership of the Iranian revolution, and the emphasis on martyrdom to defend this thesis.
Both are overly simplistic. Islamist Fundamentalism has expressed itself over a wide variability of movements and through a large range of means; a similar mosaic is needed to describe its genesis and continuation.
First, the background: Islam’s meteoric rise in her first few centuries of existence naturally led to a confident theological world view. Muslims explained the speed and expanse of their conquest as Gods’ favor toward the community He had entrusted as the sole custodians of His Truth. As He had commanded them to spread it over the entire globe; they could no more fail than could He. Christianity, in contrast, was established largely under the assumption that its members would be periodically persecuted by the state. In situations where another, hostile, force is dominant they have a clear and available lens to interpret the world and their role in it. Muslims have no such theological fall-back position, and the rise of the West - and its subsequent conquest of the lands of Islam - has thrown its inhabitants into a form of cultural cognitive dissonance. Humiliation, shame, and anger fuse with each other in attempting to explain How This Could Be. The result is a Napoleonic inferiority complex. This expresses itself in a number of ways.
The most obvious is the reach to selectively redefine the world around them. It is worth noting that the one area in which both official “state” and “popular” nationalistic expressions agree in the Middle East is in the speed with which they spread and accept conspiracy theories to explain national deficiencies. Misdeeds by members of the Arab community are often ignored or even blamed on the West. When Syria crushed the city of Hama in 1992 (killing an estimated 10,000-25,000 people to put down an Islamist-inspired revolt), the general response was comparatively muted. Mere months later, the slaughter of 700-800 Palestinian refugees by Maronite allies of Israel provoked shocked and widespread condemnation of Israel, and the West was blamed for both disasters. The Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) is relatively uninterested in brutal civil wars or repressions within its member-states (Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Somalia), and instead prefers to focus only on the human rights of Muslims living in non-Islamic states, such as Palestinians in Israel. Even actions by allies cannot be decried; when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, an Islamic country, the response from the nationalist / militarist nation-states was muted at best. Some states (including the Palestinian Liberation Organization) even defended the move. For that matter, the alliance with the Soviet Union demonstrates the need to restructure and redefine history. The USSR was no natural ally of the Arabs, as it played a significant role in ensuring that the United Nations General Assembly would vote to establish Israel, was among the first of foreign governments to grant it recognition, and authorized its satellites to sell Israel weaponry. What provided the popular support for Egypt, Syria, et. al. allying with the USSR was the perception that this would give the hated West a black eye. Anything was defendable so long as it revenged the humiliation and relieved the pressure of inferiority.
Even former enemies could become purified through their opposition to the West. Saddam Hussein’s initial invasion of Kuwait prompted Osama bin Laden to extend an offer to the Saudi royal family to place his organization at their service – to fight Saddam. Their rejection and Saddam’s opposition to the United States, however, turned the tables and by 1998 in his Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders bin Laden was describing the American actions in Iraq as “aggression.” The ideological necessity of opposing the West (and the US in particular) required that Osama decry them for undertaking the same mission that he himself had earlier offered to do. For those suffering most intently from this condition, acts of violence in service of a selective reality became an instrument of self-expression, a means of relieving the pressure stemming from the anger towards a world not obedient to ones’ world view.
