Why do Muslims in foreign countries hate America?
This question came up in one of the Reddit groups I monitor. My answer is reproduced below.
I actually have a theory on this one. I could be wrong.
My theory goes like this. The United States is one of the few nations on Earth founded on a philosophical principle, which we view as a sort of civic religion. Our founding creed is that of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And most Americans believe in this concept of equality (though we constantly bicker over what it means in practice)–and we believe as deeply and as fervently as any evangelist or any other practitioner of any major religion.
This reflects itself in our foreign policy. We seem to approach foreign policy less as a practical matter (though there is a strong sense of pragmatism in how we conduct our affairs overseas), and more as an effort to evangelize the Good News of the Freedom of Man. That is, we are less pragmatists playing the “game of thrones” around the world and more religious proselytizers who are bent on spreading democracy which includes our own vision about what democracy looks like as an expression of Free Men and Women.
Now we’ve rationalized our religious zeal. The above linked paper, for example, notes:
After a brief discussion of definitions of democracy and liberalism, the paper summarizes the reasons why the spread of democracy— especially liberal democracy— benefits the citizens of new democracies, promotes international peace, and serves U.S. interests.
And I have remarked that, despite being the most powerful nation on Earth (in terms of military might and economy) we Americans want nothing more than to sink into obscurity safe in the knowledge that the entire world embraces our civic religion, that the entire world believes as deeply as we do “that all men are created equal.”
This is important because if you step back for a moment, you can see how this makes us amazingly tone deaf as we swing our might around the world.
You can also see how this makes America simultaneously the most disliked nation in many regions around the world–and yet the most desired country to immigrate to.
You can see how it makes many countries wary of American cultural exports–such as our movies, most of which are dripping with this underlying assumption that all men are created equal. And why so many countries around the world are disgusted with us–because our inherently multicultural society (for the most part most of us don’t care what you drink, wear, eat, what God or Gods you worship, what you believe or what your heritage is, so long as you believe as we do in the freedom of man)–we are able to export better quality movies that tell culturally important stories than the locals can. (China has been miffed at the quality of Kung Fu Panda, for example, wondering why they couldn’t have made that movie themselves.)
It’s because our cultural exports look almost like an insidious plot to export our religious beliefs to the world, wrapped in a high quality action film or a cute cartoon.
There is another competing religious ideology which has undertones of how one should approach governance and how one should view the position of man in the world.
And that is Islam.
Sure, other religions (Catholicism, Buddhism, etc., etc.) have views about the relationship between man and the divine universe, about the place of man amongst other men, and about the proper shape of governments and how rulers should rule.
But Islam for some has a rather explicit language for the relationship between man and Allah, between men, and between men and governments.
For example, Islam has the notion of “Dar al-Islam” or the abode of Islam: those regions of the world who are explicitly Muslim and where the ruling sect practices Islam. In most of these countries Islam has a privileged position in society, and islamic values hold sway in the culture of that country. (So, for example, in some Islamic countries women are required to dress modestly.)
Regions of the world not under the sway of Islam are “Dar al-Harb”, or literally “the abode of war”: these are areas where Islam do not hold sway, where Islamic values are not guaranteed and where Muslims do not have a privileged position in society.
It’s not to say that individual Muslims are discriminated against in the “abode of war.” Muslim doctors in the United States can make an excellent salary, for example. (In the United States 10% of all practicing doctors are Muslim.)
And here’s the trick, why my post is so stupid long and annoying.
American civic religious beliefs–beliefs we Americans tend to hold so deeply we don’t even realize it–is fundamentally incompatible with the vision of “Dar al-Islam.”
So to those who believe in the abodes of Islam and the abodes of war, America represents, quite fundamentally, an existential threat.
Not that we Americans want Muslims to convert to Christianity. We don’t. There are many aspects of Islam which many of us Americans find quite pretty or remarkable or righteous–such as the Zakat, a variation of which Americans try to practice ourselves. (Zakat is almsgiving or donating to charity.)
But we do want you to accept our notion of the equality of man–and that runs at odds with the notion that Muslims should hold a special position in governance or that Islamic culture should hold a special sway over culture.
That means accepting certain things that you (or I, as an American) may find offensive. That means allowing people to find their own paths–even if you (or I, as an American) think it’s the path to their personal ruin. That means accepting (even if believing it’s a mistake) other people’s sexual freedoms and personal freedoms and freedom to say what they will and live as they will.
(Of course we have the freedom to say “what the hell is wrong with you?” After all, we also have the freedom to say what we will. But that does not translate into forcing them to live in the way we think they should–even if that path was dictated to us by Allah through Mohammed, or outlined in the Bible and reaffirmed by Jesus, or written in golden plates by the angel Moroni and handed to Joseph Smith.)
But that’s the bottom of the stack. American civic religion–our core belief in the equality of man, which we treat like a religion and ponder why the entire world doesn’t believe as we do–is incompatible with a vision of Islam as a geopolitical force.
Just as our civic religion is arguably incompatible with other geopolitical beliefs–though unlike (say) Communism, where apologists have tried to argue is a better expression of the equality of man than what we have now–there is simply no defending the notion of “Dar al-Islam” with “all men are created equal.”
tl;dr: To much of the rest of the world America is a bunch of powerful, stumbling, bumbling religious zealots trying to evangelize our notion of the equality of man, and that can piss off the locals.
Fuzzy little things that I find interesting. 