The strongest remaining barrier to American music television and film is Islamic fundamentalism. In the Khomeini era in Iran American cultural products were the supreme symbols of satanic decadence. The more fanatical Iranian and Saudi authorities became in their attempts to purify their traditional cultures the more people were drawn to forbidden music and film. (Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order 1994 pg 140.)
The above passage is an apt summation of the current dilemma confronting the West in its dealings with the Muslim world; it is indicative of a mindset which views the relations between states in apocalyptic rather than merely political terms. That is why the current approach to the Arab-Israeli situation has failed and will continue to fail unless this fact is understood. Hatred toward Israel is only a small part of a much deeper problem.
The roots of the West’s modern confrontation with the Muslim world begin not in 1948 the year of Israel’s birth but rather in 1648 the year the Turks were driven for the second and last time from the gates of Vienna. The latter year marked the end of the almost continuous Islamic offensive against the Occident begun in the early Middle Ages and the beginning of a Western counter-offensive which in both the political and cultural spheres has lasted to this day. Europeans not only conquered much of the Muslim heartland in the process but also introduced elements of a dynamic civilization into what was a basically static society.
Islam is as much a political system as a religion it being understood that both politics and belief are part and parcel of a larger whole. Therefore the occupation of Muslim lands by non-believers was bound to cause a shock to the collective system. Ideas such as democracy nationalism capitalism and communism were introduced into what was a traditionally hierarchical dynastic and barter-based world. The old and the new mixed as the Mohammedan world was confronted with these new demands.
National renewal parties such as the Ba’athist were formed by mostly Western educated men who were openly influenced by the new ideas. Many of these individuals such as Ba’ath party founders Michel Aflaq and Salah-Ud-In Bitar championed a pan-Arab national revival based as much on ethno-cultural ties as religion; radical ideas on land distribution played a prominent part in Egyptian president Nasser’s Arab Socialist program. The non-Arab Islamic states of Turkey and Persia each introduced reforms with the aim of creating modern secular republics.
With few exceptions this situation has continued unchanged to the present. Most of the Muslim world has failed to successfully blend Western technological progress with traditional Islamic civilization; the result has been either pseudo-revolutionary regimes (such as that of Nasser’s) which fail to address the underlying problems or reactionary governments (such as the Taliban) which hope to avoid these questions altogether. Even Turkey where the idea of a non-sectarian state was maintained for more than half a century seems unable to solve this dilemma. Kemal Ataturk’s lay nation is now ruled by an Islamic party whose allegiance to Western ideas seems doubtful at best.
The creation of Israel was merely a tangible symbol of the Arabo-Muslim world’s impotence in the face of the Western challenge. Noted historian Robert Wistrich recognizes this fact when he writes The very existence of Israel is a sign to many Muslims that the forces of darkness and immorality wickedness and apostasy have gained a temporary ascendency in the world. He also writes that Israel Zionism and the Jews it is constantly suggested deliberately seek to destroy Islam as a religion to achieve ‘normalization’ with Egypt…to promote white slavery pornography and American television series… that corrupt morals as part of their cultural assault on the Arabs. (Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred 1991 pgs. 236-237 and pg.258.)
Thus Israel is both corrupt in itself and a conduit of corrosive western (particularly American) cultural values. That is the reason for the savage hatred directed at the Jewish state; suicide bombers and other terrorists are striking at what the Russian intellectual and anti-Semite Igor Shafarevitch once described as the senseless race of industrial society…and the darkness of unbelief.
Therefore it is not Israeli policy that is the issue but what Israel represents. It is a lesson the West would do well to learn.
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