Islam, the West, and the War on Terror

The conflict between the United States and certain Muslim countries, waged under the banner of the so-called War on Terror, is one chapter in a much longer struggle that dates back to the eighteenth century, when Western imperial powers set out to divide the world and exploit it for their own interests. Nations resisted colonial plunder through movements of resistance that came to be known as popular liberation movements. Yet, with the United States exercising overwhelming influence over the media, politics, and military affairs, and with globalization and Western dominance over media, markets, and capital flows, these resistance movements came to be labeled as terrorism.

Several developments helped this label spread. The Non-Aligned Movement gradually weakened and eventually lost much of its influence, while a new form of colonialism emerged in the shape of the New World Order, which many ruling elites in the developing world accepted. Local intellectuals also began championing globalization and the American model. In the 1960s, it would have been almost unthinkable for an Arab intellectual to defend American policies. Today, however, some intellectuals openly align themselves with the Western model.

Despite this shift, liberation struggles have resurfaced. Whether they will continue remains uncertain, but they are undoubtedly struggles waged by the oppressed and the powerless against the powerful and the unjust. One may disagree with some of the methods employed in these struggles. Yet the predicament of the oppressed is that they lack the weapons available to their oppressors and are therefore driven to develop alternative forms of resistance, as the Palestinians did when they took up stones against a vastly more powerful adversary.

A Long History of Civilizational Exchange

Our relationship with the West stretches far back into history, to the time when Alexander the Great arrived in our lands and his successors established a settler society that ruled Egypt and Syria for several centuries. Historically, this relationship involved an exchange in both directions, with each side experiencing victories and defeats.

Plato, for example, traveled to Egypt and studied under its priests, while Arab scholars translated Aristotle's works and drew extensively on his logic and philosophy. Yet each civilization possessed a distinct identity rooted in a firmly established cultural and intellectual tradition. It was this foundation that enabled it to engage with other civilizations, assimilate what it encountered, and incorporate foreign influences without being overwhelmed by them.

The same was true of Western civilization, which drew extensively from Arab civilization while retaining its own identity and character. This pattern of exchange continued in times of both peace and war. Even during the Crusades, when European armies invaded the region and devastated the lands through which they passed, interaction between two distinct civilizations continued.

When the Ottoman Empire emerged, the West regarded the Islamic East with a mixture of awe, fear, and respect. The Ottoman state was a powerful empire with its own symbols of authority and formidable military capabilities. Its civilization, technological achievements, and material progress enabled it to contribute to the exchange of knowledge and power on terms that were not entirely one-sided.

Western Imperialism and the Rise of a Utilitarian World Order

This balance persisted until the scientific and technological revolutions transformed the West, accompanied by the rise of imperialism and a form of global expansion unprecedented in scale. A new world order emerged, one that was, in essence, a Western colonial order. Modernity increasingly became detached from moral values, the West came to center the world around itself, and entire populations were reduced to resources to be exploited and manipulated.

Human societies were no longer regarded as possessing inherent sanctity or worth. Instead, they became expendable material, subject to destruction and annihilation in the pursuit of power and imperial interests.

I will share a striking, indeed disturbing, observation. While working on the Encyclopedia, I noticed that the word Muslim appeared repeatedly in an article entitled “Social Hierarchy in the Nazi Auschwitz Camp,” as well as in several other studies. After consulting a number of references, including the Encyclopaedia Judaica, I found accounts stating that Jews being led to the gas chambers were referred to as Muselmänner, a term meaning “Muslims.”

In other words, according to these accounts, the victims whom the Nazi machinery of extermination reduced to their most degraded and powerless state were described using a term associated with Muslims. This raises a disturbing question about how the Western mind, in the very act of destroying its victims, perceived them as the Other. And, in this account, that Other was the Muslim.