The Enemy At Home (3 page)

Is this really true? There is no evidence that Muslims—or even the Islamic fundamentalists—hate the West because the West is modern, or because the West embodies technology, prosperity, and democracy. There is a universal desire for prosperity in today’s world, and the Islamic world is no exception. Moreover, Islamic fundamentalists are not opposed to technology; it is technology that enables them to build bombs and fly planes into buildings. Many Al Qaeda operatives have scientific and technical (as opposed to religious) training. Even among Islamic fundamentalists, freedom is rarely condemned, and the term is often used in a positive sense, as in “Let us free ourselves from Western domination” or “Let us liberate Muslim land from Israeli occupation.” Finally, there is widespread support for democracy in the Muslim world. While bin Laden is an enemy of democracy, most of the organizations of radical Islam, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, have become champions of democracy. The reason is quite simple: the Islamic radicals have seen that if their countries have free elections, their group can win!

Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, graffiti began to appear on the walls of the city and its environs. The following scrawl caught my attention. “Marriage of the same sex became legal in America. Is this, with the mafia and drugs, what you want to bring to Iraq, America? Is this the freedom you promised?” Even if the source of this statement is of little consequence, the content is revealing. It is not an objection to freedom, but to the kind of freedom associated with drug legalization and homosexual marriage. As such, it is a vital clue to the sources of Muslim rage. And here is a quote from a recent videotape by Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy of bin Laden and reputed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks: “The freedom we want is not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; it is not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; it is not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”
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What these statements convey is that these Islamic radicals do not hate America because of its wealth and power; they hate America because of how Americans use that wealth and power. They do not hate us for our freedom; they hate us because of what we do with our freedom. The radical Muslims are convinced that America and Europe have become sick, demented societies that destroy religious belief, undermine traditional morality, dissolve the patriarchal family, and corrupt the innocence of children. The term that Islamic radicals use to describe Western influence is
firangi
. The term means “Frankish” disease, and it refers to syphilis, a disease that Europeans first introduced to the Middle East.
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Today Muslims use the term in a metaphorical sense, to describe the social and moral corruption produced by the virus of Westernization.

The Muslims who hate us the most are the ones who have encountered Western decadence, either in the West or in their own countries. The revealing aspect of the 9/11 terrorists is not that so many came from Saudi Arabia, but that so many of them, like the ringleader, Muhammad Atta, and his Hamburg group, had lived in and been exposed to the West. My point is that their hatred was not a product of ignorance but of familiarity; not of Wahhabi indoctrination but of firsthand observation.

But isn’t it true, as many Americans believe, that American culture is broadly appealing around the world? Yes, and this is precisely why America and not Europe is the main target of the Islamic radicals. Decadence is arguably far worse in Europe than in America, and Europe has had its share of attacks, such as the Madrid train bombing of 2004 and the London subway bombing of 2005. But even in those cases the European targets were picked because of their governments’ support for America. The Islamic radicals focus on America because they recognize that it is the leader of Western civilization or, as they sometimes put it, “the greatest power of the unbelievers.” Bin Laden himself said in a 1998 interview, “What prompted us to address the American government is the fact that it is the head of the Western and crusading forces in their fight against Islam and against Muslims.”
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Moreover, Muslims realize that it is American culture and values that are penetrating the far corners of the globe, corroding ancient orthodoxies, and transforming customs and institutions. Many Americans, whatever their politics, generally regard such change as healthy and good. But this attitude is not shared in traditional societies, and it is virtually nonexistent in the Muslim world. America is feared and despised there not in spite of its cultural allure but because of it.

An anecdote will illustrate my point. Some time ago I saw an interview with a Muslim sheikh on a European TV channel. The interviewer told the sheikh, “I find it curious and hypocritical that you are so anti-American, considering that two of your relatives are living and studying in America.” The sheikh replied, “But this is not hypocritical at all. I concede that American culture is appealing, especially to young people. If you put a young man into a hotel room and give him dozens of pornography tapes, he is likely to find those appealing as well. What America appeals to is everything that is low and disgusting in human nature.”

There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures—a belief encouraged but by no means created by Islamic fundamentalism—that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. As former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto puts it, “Within the Muslim world, there is a reaction against the sexual overtones that come across in American mass culture. America is viewed through this prism as an immoral society.” In his book
The Crisis of Islam,
Bernard Lewis rehearses what he calls the “standard litany of American offenses recited in the lands of Islam” and ends with this one: “Yet the most powerful accusation of all is the degeneracy and debauchery of the American way of life.”
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As these observations suggest, what angers religious Muslims is not the American Constitution but the scandalous sexual mores they see in American movies and television. What disgusts them is not free elections but the sights of hundreds of homosexuals kissing one another and taking marriage vows. The person that horrifies them the most is not John Locke but Hillary Clinton.

In other cultures—China, Nigeria, India—there are similar concerns that American culture and values are destroying the moral basis of those traditional societies. This resistance is summed up in a slogan often used by Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew: “Modernization Without Westernization.”
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What this means is that traditional cultures want prosperity and technology, but they don’t want to become like America. The Islamic fundamentalists are the most extreme and politically mobilized segment of this global resistance. What distinguishes them is the depth of their repulsion and their willingness to fight and to die to eradicate American influence from their part of the world.

Their main motive is the belief that the fate of Islam is at stake. Bin Laden in one of his videos said that Islam faces the greatest threat it has faced since Muhammad.
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How could he possibly think this? Not because of U.S. troops in Mecca. Not even because of Israel. The threat bin Laden is referring to is an infiltration of American values and mores into the life of Muslims, transforming their society and destroying their religious beliefs. Even the term “Great Satan,” so commonly used to denounce America in the Muslim world, is better understood when we recall that in the traditional understanding, shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Satan is not a conqueror; he is a tempter. In one of its best-known verses, the Koran describes Satan as “the insidious one who whispers into the hearts of men.”

THESE CONCERNS PROMPT
a startling thought—are the radical Muslims right? Is America a threat to the traditional cultures of the world? Is American culture a worldwide destroyer of morals? Do American values undermine the traditional family and corrupt the innocence of children? Many Americans are likely to indignantly answer, “No.” Conservatives are no less reluctant than liberals to admit that some radical Muslims may have valid objections to American society. Patriotism itself seems to demand an American response that highlights the horrors of Islamic behavior: “Look how your religion inspires terrorists to kill women and children!” “Look how you oppress women!” As broad judgments on Muslim society, these charges reflect a narrow and somewhat prejudiced view of Islamic culture. But even if the charges were true, they would hardly constitute a vindication of American culture.

We should not dismiss the Islamic or traditional critique so easily. In fact, as our own domestic and cultural debate shows, we know that many of the concerns raised by the radical Muslims are widely shared in our own society. Many conservative and religious Americans agree with the Islamic fundamentalists that American culture has become increasingly vulgar, trivial, and disgusting. I am referring not merely to the reality shows where contestants eat maggots, or the talk shows where guests reveal the humiliating details of their sex lives. I am referring also to “high culture,” to liberal culture that offers itself as refined and sophisticated.

Here, for example, is a brief excerpt from Eve Ensler’s
Vagina Monologues,
a play that won rave reviews and Hollywood accolades and is now routinely performed (according to its own publicity materials) in more than twenty countries, including China and Turkey. In the book version of the play—now sold in translation in Pakistan, India, and Egypt—Ensler offers what she terms “vagina occurrences”: “Glenn Close gets 2,500 people to stand up and chant the word
cunt
…. There is now a Cunt Workshop at Wesleyan University…. Roseanne performs ‘What Does Your Vagina Smell Like?’ in her underwear for two thousand people…. Alanis Morissette and Audra McDonald sing the cunt piece.”
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And so on. If all of this makes many Americans uncomfortable and embarrassed—which may be part of Ensler’s objective—one can only imagine how it is received in traditional cultures where the public recitation of such themes and language is considered a grotesque violation of manners and morals. Nor is Ensler an extreme example. If the garbage heap of American excess leaves many Americans feeling dirty and defiled at home, what gives America the right to dump it on the rest of the world?

The debate over popular culture points to a deeper issue. For the past quarter century we have been having a culture war in this country, which has, until now, been viewed as a debate with only domestic ramifications. I believe that it has momentous global consequences as well. When we debate hot-button issues like abortion, school prayer, divorce, and gay marriage, we are debating two radically different views of liberty and morality. Issues like divorce and family breakdown are important in themselves, yet they are ultimately symptoms of a great moral shift that has occurred in American society, one that continues to divide and polarize this country, and one that is at the root of the anti-Americanism of traditional cultures.

The shift can be described in this way. Some years ago I read Tom Brokaw’s book
The Greatest Generation,
which describes the virtues of the World War II generation. I asked myself whether this was truly the “greatest” generation. Was it greater than the generation of the American founding? Greater than the Civil War generation? I don’t think so. The significant thing about the World War II generation is that it was the
last
generation. Last in what way? It was the last generation to embrace an external code of traditional morality. Indeed, this generation’s great failure is that it was unable to inculcate this moral code in its children. Thus the frugal, self-disciplined, deferred-gratification generation of World War II produced the spoiled children of the 1960s—the Clinton generation.

From the American founding until World War II, there was a widespread belief in this country that there is a moral order in the universe that makes claims on us. This belief was not unique to Americans. It was shared by Europeans since the very beginning of Western civilization, and it is held even today by all the traditional cultures of the world. The basic notion is that morality is external to us and is binding on us. In the past, Americans and Europeans, being for the most part Christian, might disagree with Hindus and Muslims about the exact source of this moral order, its precise content, or how a society should convert its moral beliefs into legal and social practice. But there was little doubt across the civilizations of the world about the existence of such an order. Moreover, laws and social norms typically reflected this moral consensus. During the first half of the twentieth century, the moral order generated some clear American social norms:
Go to church. Be faithful to your wife. Support your children. Go when your country calls.
And so on. The point is not that everyone lived up to the dictates of the moral code, but that it supplied a standard, accepted virtually throughout society, for how one should act.

What has changed in America since the 1960s is the erosion of belief in an external moral order. This is the most important political fact of the past half century. I am not saying that most Americans today reject morality. I am saying that there has been a great shift in the source of morality. Today there is no longer a moral consensus in American society. Many Americans locate morality not in a set of external commands but in the imperatives of their own heart. For them, morality is not “out there” but “in here.” While many Americans continue to believe in the old morality, there is now a new morality in America, which may be called the morality of the inner self, the morality of self-fulfillment.

Here, at the deepest level, is the divide between conservatives and liberals, between Red America and Blue America. Conservatives believe in traditional morality. Liberals believe in personal autonomy and self-fulfillment. And liberals have been winning the culture war in the sense that they have been able to produce a massive transformation of American society and culture along the lines of their new moral code. My point is not that liberals would approve of all the grossness and sensuality of contemporary popular culture, but that the liberal promotion of autonomy, individuality, and self-fulfillment as moral ideals make it impossible to question or criticize or place limits on these cultural trends. In the moral code of self-fulfillment, “pushing the envelope,” or testing the borders of sexual and moral tolerance, becomes a virtue, and fighting for traditional morality becomes a form of repression or vice.