Know Thy Enemy
Why they hate us.

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition
February 25, 2002 8:50 a.m.

n Feb. 11 the government warned of impending terrorist attack, and newspapers published the names and photos of 17 glowering young Muslims. For the first time we were being told: These particular young men, out there right now, hate us so much that shortly they could be involved in murdering large numbers of Americans. Thus a often-asked question came to the fore with fresh poignancy: Why do they hate us?

After Sept. 11, some commentators said Islamist fanatics hate America because we have been kind to Israel. But the theory sputtered when, in videotaped lectures, Osama bin Laden persistently downplayed the Israeli angle.

Bernard Lewis has argued that Muslims suffer from shame mixed with resentment at the way their civilization has fallen to material and cultural poverty from the long-ago heights of the Islamic and Ottoman empires. The problem is those 17 faces, of men mostly in their 20s, who one strongly doubts possess Lewis's sweeping grasp of history over the past millennium and more. Mention Saladin to these recently bearded thugs and you would get back the Arabic equivalent of "Huh?"

The key to understanding why these youths hate us may be their very youth. There are dynamics at work here that are most readily explainable in terms of children's interactions with each other and with adults.

First there is the Parenting Effect. Did you ever hear of a parent who resented his children? Rarely. Now did you ever hear of a child who resented — hated! — his parents? It is a paradox that often the more you give to others, the more they resent you. This is why the Fifth Commandment demands that we honor our parents, while no commandment asks that we love our children. The former is against our nature, so it needs to be commanded.

The world's parent, America is always mending broken nations, pulling apart squabbling peoples, giving indulgent allowances (called foreign aid) even while our children revile us in international forums. Every time natural disaster strikes the Third World, we're on the scene immediately in mothering mode. We pay for our generosity as parents have always done: by enduring the hatred of those we benefit.

Second, there is the Bully Factor. I know bullies because in grade school I was one myself. In the momma's boy who would not put up a fight against me I found something contemptible, inviting me to humiliate him.

Long before Sept. 11, America was bullied. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; after the 1995 bombing of an American facility in Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans; after the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans; after the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 12 Americans; after the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors — after each of these, wrought by Arab terrorists — we little or nothing in response. Young Muslims found something contemptible in this, inviting them to humiliate us.

Third and most importantly there is the Enemy Advantage. This dynamic is seen among elementary-school kids, who bond in groups by joining together against other children. In nice schools, the phenomenon is called "cliques." In not nice schools, "gangs."

Thus the first rule for building any social movement is: Create an enemy. Communists had the bourgeoisie. The Sixties anti-war movement had the Establishment. The American academic Left has America. The Anti-Defamation League has its phantom skinheads hiding under the bed of every little old Jewish lady in Fort Lauderdale.

Long ago, Islam established world empires by focusing its wrath on the infidel: Christians. The adults in the Islamic nations, some of whom remember, have brilliantly deployed the Enemy Advantage to rally their young. America makes the perfect enemy because this is the most enthusiastically Christian nation in the world, and because that callow Muslim youth who never heard of Saladin has certainly heard of the United States.

If we understand our foes a bit better, we should be in an improved position to defeat them. This isn't, of course, to say the struggle against fanatic Islamism is child's play.