American Crusaders

The deteriorating and volatile relationship between Islam and the West deserves historical tracking and monitoring, and not just because it is one of the most serious relationships prone to becoming twisted, which could eventually lead to complications and possible explosion. Looking back historically sheds light on what we have been calling, since the beginning of the 90s, “Islamophobia.”

This new Western phobia, or apprehension, did not exist before Arab and Muslim countries gained their political independence during the first half of the last century. We can now see a new result of this phobia that perhaps has not been noticed by observers before: the idea of describing the West and its behaviors towards us as “crusades.” This is new in the history of relations between the Muslim and the Western worlds. It is new because it did not precede the emergence of so-called Al-Qaida, whose members undermined the crusader term by attributing it to the Western world and basing it on a concept from the Middle Ages. This term is still alive in the minds of fundamentalists, especially in those involved with the Islamic renaissance, which appeared throughout the post-crusade years at the hands of Ibn Taymiyya and the likes.

The second, and more important, phenomenon is the complicated evolution of the discord between America and the Muslim world in a complicated way that is impossible to predict. This evolution has focused hostile sentiments in the Arab world against the United States of America in particular, amongst the rest of the Western world. America has become the leader of the new “crusade” in its modern incarnation, according to what Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations are trying to insinuate, with a goal of temporary and long-term political gains.

America’s role as leader of the crusade has been evident for a long time, even though it was not felt in the long line of historical conflicts between the Muslim world and the West until July 5, 1967 when America stood out (amongst all countries) as guarantor and guardian of the existence of Israel and the continuation of this existence in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world. After this incident, the map of international conflicts formed in a way that American administrations were unable to control the region to serve their interests.

The outcome of U.S. attempts to control the region was manifested in an unpredictable and unlimited hatred of specifically America, not any other Western countries. This took place regardless of the hateful colonial heritage that dominates the relationship of the Arab Muslim world has with the European countries which occupied the majority of our countries for a long period of time. The shrunken European empires avoided the hatred and grudges awaiting them thanks to Washington and its blind and infinite support of Israel. The focus of hateful sentiments has become America, not European countries such as Britain, even though they hold the most responsibility for the current Palestinian catastrophe and tragedy of the Palestinian people as a result of their promise to the Jewish people for their own homeland.

The above assumption is of utmost importance to the American mindset, especially that of the administration, because there is a constant attempt shed the “crusader” accusation and the idea that Americans are hostile to Islam and Muslims. The truth must be said, however, that American administrations, especially after the Arab-Israeli wars, placed themselves in the category of those who hate and antagonize Muslims. Terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida, exploited this to find a focus point for Islamic and Arab hatred of America. These actions are responsible for mobilizing hostile feelings towards America that are only satisfied through blind sadistic behavior towards the evident symbols of the Western civilizations, such as the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, symbolically the biggest building in the world.

A question remains, however, without a satisfactory answer: was America able to predict this anti-Islam and Muslim hostility? The answer is no, because America has taken it upon itself, unlike other countries such as Britain, France and Germany, to retaliate for the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust. Why is it that America has assumed this mission more than all other Western countries with which it shares these moving and kind emotions towards the Jews? There is a sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world which can only be summarized as hatred or inflamed feelings of revenge towards America and not other countries such as Britain, France, Austria and Italy.

The situation appears before the observer as if the Muslim world is in a state of agitation caused by America, which Al-Qaida and its likes presented as the only state responsible for the existence of Israel and the Palestinians’ struggle today. This representation depicts the Muslims world in a feminine way, acting upset and annoyed and turning its back on America, which takes the masculine role by trying to reconcile with Islam and win its approval. America does this to rid itself of the “crusader” label that fell on its head only, not other countries that occupied the Muslim and Arab world such as Britain and France.

American fear of Islam and Muslim resistance and opposition to America was in reality a make or break issue for American administrations as they rushed forward without sufficient wisdom and foresight, gambling with its relations with Israel (the winning card in their view), without giving the slightest attention to the Arab neighbors of Israel. This rush perhaps proceeded the petrodollar era or the era of discovering the largest petroleum reserves which incidentally were in the Arab world and not Israel.