“The most insidious is that Muslims have existed fundamentally and irreparably in a state of conflict with the Judeo-Christian civilization: ‘Well, you know it was like that in history and will remain so.’”

The second posits Islam as “a fascist ideology, fundamentally aggressive or totalitarian.”

The third is the “sleeper jihad” theory, which triggers the “holy war” DNA of a Muslim. “Like a keg of dynamite that could explode at any time!”

The fourth theme, and this is the one that Bush uses, is to offer passing praise for Islam as a religion of peace but to attack “political Islam” or “radical Islam” or “militant Islam” or “Islamism.” The faith is fine as long as “it is a completely private creed, practiced solely in the confines of the home. But the moment it wants to engage the world, it is dangerous.”

THE MUSLIM MALAISE

He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment.

— Prophet Muhammad29

One of the strangest aspects of the post-9/11 world is that despite all the talk about Muslim terrorism, there has hardly been any exploration of the complex causes of Muslim rage. Muslims are in a state of crisis, but their most daunting problems are not religious. They are geopolitical, economic and social — problems that have caused widespread Muslim despair and, in some cases, militancy, both of which are expressed in the religious terminology that Muslim masses relate to.

Most Muslims live in the developing world, much of it colonized by Western powers as recently as fifty years ago. Not all Muslim shortcomings emanate from colonialism and neo-imperialism, but several do.

As part of the spoils of World War I, Britain and France helped themselves to much of the Ottoman Empire, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and what is now Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Authority. In later years, they and other European colonial powers created arbitrary states such as Kuwait and Nigeria. Or they divided peoples and nations along sectarian lines, such as bifurcating India in 1947 into Muslim Pakistan and largely Hindu India. In more recent years, the US has maintained repressive proxy regimes in the Middle East to stifle anti-Israeli public sentiments, keep control of oil and maintain a captive market for armaments.

While the past casts a long shadow over Muslims, it is the present that haunts them. Hundreds of millions live in zones of conflict, precisely in the areas of European and American meddling, past and present — US-occupied Iraq, US-controlled Afghanistan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and Kashmir, the disputed Muslim state on the border of India and Pakistan in the foothills of the Himalayas. Only the Russian war on Muslim Chechnya was not related to the history of Western machinations, but even that had the tacit support of the Bush administration. These conflicts, along with the economic sanctions on Iraq, have killed perhaps as many as 2.4 million in the last sixteen years alone. Why are we surprised that Muslims are up in arms?