At Salon, right after the terrorist attacks, we received a number of letters from people who couldn't understand why someone would hate us so much.
I find that surprising, but I think that's because of the time I have spent over there. There is this tremendous anger that has been mounting ever since the fall of the Turks, when the West began to carve up the Middle East and establish these dynasties and create these borders, these colonial borders. There has been anger against the power of the infidel and also a tremendous resentment of the technology -- all this technology which Islam did not produce.
Islam is supposed to rule, Islam is supposed to be the enlightened part of the world that got the message directly from God. It is very unseemly that all these proud people exist who reject Islam and nevertheless prosper so much and even give orders to Muslim kings and generals -- it's just not right.
The Quran is full of references to the people of Id: They are proud, they are rich, but they are infidels and the Quran keeps saying they will fall, their cities will fall. I think that to get an insight into the thinking of the most extreme radical Muslims, a reading of the Old Testament is instructive.
To get a sense of how much harsh unforgivingness there is?
Yes. The harsh unforgivingness to the enemy who has no respect for God, for the Lord of Hosts -- who is obviously real to people who climb into airplanes and crash them into buildings. That supernatural world is amazingly real to them; you wonder if it is as real to clerics in the West as it is to them.
And they resent the power and aggressiveness of the West; it used to be Britain, now it's us. They tend to see Israel as nothing more than a creation of ours. They read "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," they believe a lot of things. There are a lot of people walking around East Jerusalem who believe that Adam built the Dome of the Rock.
In "Damascus Gate" there's a very strong sense of intractability in the conflict between the West and Islam.
Yes, exactly. There was a picture in the Times several days before the bombing started; it was downtown Kabul, it was a pile of rocks and a kid on a donkey, and you thought, well, what could they possibly bomb? They're bombing the pile of rocks and the kid on the donkey, or at least they're dropping bombs pretty close to that kid, and they are screwing up and dropping bombs on some civilians, and that is certainly going to turn people in the Islamic world against the United States.
There is a tremendous amount of myth, totally mythical attitudes toward the United States, that is fueled by karate movies -- you know all the Hollywood reject movies that show in downtown Cairo -- that just portray the United States as the most utterly depraved place imaginable. I mean they really believe it's a very, very bad place full of very bad people. They genuinely -- the average Muslim does believe that. They don't like to be inhospitable or unfriendly but it does emerge, when you talk to people in that part of the world. That opinion of America is somewhat deluded, but it's very, very low. And the longer the war lasts, the more they'll get uneasy about the killing of fellow Muslims and the more people in Europe will begin to move on the old Vietnam lines.
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