Cleaning House

Recent published stories from around the Muslim world corroborate Ramsey's analysis. In a lengthy Sept. 27 report from a dozen Muslim nations, the Christian Science Monitor said: "From one end of the region to the other, the perception is that Israel can get away with murder -- literally -- and that Washington will turn a blind eye." The same report quoted a Palestinian member of Hamas, a radical group sending suicide bombers into Israel, saying: "Even small children know that Israel is nothing without America. And here America means F-16, M-16, Apache helicopters, the tools Israelis use to kill us and destroy our homes." In an Oct. 2 story in the New York Times, a Kuwaiti political scientist said "The story [here] is not bin Laden, the story is the injustice to the Palestinian people." In a Sept. 23 emergency meeting, reported the Times, "the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- Saudi Arabia and its five small neighbors, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar -- coupled their support for the coalition against terrorism with condemnation of what they called terror acts by Israel." As America's closest ally, Israel receives more than $3 billion in aid from the U.S., the largest amount of such aid given to any nation.

John Esposito, head of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and the author of several books on Islam, told a reporter: "Since the Cold War ended, America has talked about promoting democracy. But we don't do anything about it in repressive regimes in the Middle East, so you can understand widespread anti-Americanism there."

Not only do we not do anything about the repressive Arab regimes, we have established permanent U.S. military bases there -- more than 5,000 troops each in Kuwait and in Saudi Arabia, in which Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites of Islam, are located -- after repeatedly saying during the Gulf War that the American presence would be temporary. Again, among Muslims worldwide, this has been akin to a colonial power's establishing a beachhead.

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Iftikhar, who has been doing a round of media interviews lately, says he has noted a recurring theme as he faces the cameras and microphones.

"On many of the TV shows and radio shows, people ask, 'Where does this hatred for the United States come from?' and I've said that many people in the Middle East view the United States as a repressive regime. They've placed sanctions on Iraq for 10 years, and the United Nations says it kills more than 5,000 children a month. You have the United States' complete complacency with Israel in which every bullet, every gun, every tank of the Israeli Army is funded with United States taxpayers' dollars. And so when a people have become so politically and economically and socially marginalized, it creates an element of despair. And although no human on earth can condone the acts of Sept. 11, it's important to understand why that happened.

"The truth will come out," he continues, "whether it be now, a year from now or two years from now. As Muslims, we have that faith in God that justice will prevail."