An Exploration of Muslim Animosity Toward the U.S.
The events of September 11, 2001, served to confirm what American government officials and many private citizens have long recognized: within the Islamic States of the world, there are many, many Muslims whose feelings toward the United States can only be described as hatred, contempt, and disgust. The question to be considered in this report is why this anti-American animosity has developed. Various explanations have been offered, among which are the belief that America has unfairly supported Israel and ignored the interests of the Palestinians (Sheler, 2001).
Other explanations of this phenomenon have been discussed by Sultan Shahin (1995) who argues that Islam views the West as an excessively secular civilization in which genuine religious feeling is increasingly stifled by materialism, consumerism, and greed. The West represents a direct threat to the traditional cultural and religious values of many conservative Islamic states. Shahin (1995) contends that the growing Islamic fervor was itself a response to the perceived threat of modernity and secularization. As the most powerful country in the world, the United States was singled out as a target for much Muslim animosity.
During the Persian Gulf War, many Islamic states and even more members of Islamic fundamentalist movements deeply resented the involvement of the United States. Some of these groups found the presence of an American-led coalition in the Middle East to be inappropriate at best and to be unacceptable at worst (The Economist, 1991). More recently, Stokes (2001) argues that at the core of Islamic animosity towards the United States is the perception that a cultural onslaught is underway in which the United States wishes to bring the entire world under the domination of it own cultural ethos. Anti-Americanism in Islamic societies tends to increase during times of crisis, such as the Persian...