Why Muslims Hate America

A great research paper topic these days is exploring why Muslims hate America. Certainly, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding people who live their faith in the traditions to which Islam was founded. American misperceptions of Islam and the Middle East have created a false picture of Muslims, based largely on the terrorist actions of a few Muslim extremists.The following are reasons behind Muslim hatred of Westerners:

• The Toronto Star (May 8, 1990) quoted one Arab scholar as saying that Muslim hatred of the West is an outgrowth of centuries of humiliation
• Islam has lain under the shadow of an inferior culture for centuries.
• Western-style economics in the Middle East has led to brutal poverty
• Western-style governments led to brutal repression, and Western-style warfare has led to defeat.

The Shah of Iran was a perfect example of corruption and brutality; he lived in opulent wealth, opening up Iran to Western values, while the majority of his subjects were struggling in poverty. Bernard Lewis, quoted by the Star, said: It is hardly surprising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan and infidel innovations of the reformers and to return to the True Path which God has prescribed for his people (p. 1).

Islamic fundamentalism appeals to the masses of the Middle East. These groups of people have seen their societies disrupted, their institutions subverted, denied or otherwise destroyed traditional values, and emphasized the class differences that have emerged as the result of 20th century capitalism. The ultimate source of cataclysmic change in the Middle East has been the West, and the two largest Western influences in the second half of the century were the USSR and the United States. Since the end of the Cold War, there has only been one world leader: America.

It is perhaps ironic then that what has been seen as the greatest US triumph in the Middle East, the 1990 Gulf War, has planted the seeds of its current crisis. At the time, the Allied victory was seen as a diplomatic coup: relations with numerous "moderate" Islamic nations improved dramatically. Osama bin Laden's suspected hatred of the United States stems from the placement of US troops on Saudi soil during the Gulf War, something he saw as an affront to Islam. Investigate this further in a political science term paper on why Muslims hate America from Paper Masters.