Disagreement

Given the rawness of everyone’s emotions in the aftermath of September 11, the editorial choice to juxtapose Asma Barlas’s article "Why Do They Hate Us?" with obituaries of IC alumni who were killed in the attacks seems most unwise. I would not be surprised if some readers felt that the article "blames the victims."

In her article Barlas accuses the United States, and by extension all her non-Muslim American readers, of viewing all Muslims as one undifferentiated mass and of partaking of what Stephen Zunes calls a "Western hostility to Muslims dating from the time of the Crusades." The irony seems to have escaped Barlas that she is generalizing as much about Americans as she complains Americans do about Muslims. Many scholarly Western publications about Muslim cultures and peoples reveal not hostility, but a fascination with and love of their subject matter.

Using selective quotes and a laundry list of military involvements, Barlas depicts U.S. foreign policy as an unchanging, unstoppable monster, bent solely upon world domination. Granted that the United States has made horrific mistakes since the end of World War II, especially during the cold war, but for Barlas the United States of today is apparently no different from that of 1954 or 1968.

Because they don’t fit into Barlas’s world view, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, and countless other examples of U.S. compassion are missing from her article. She cites our military involvements in Bosnia and Yugoslavia (presumably referencing the Kosovo conflict) as though they were bad, rather than joint efforts with other countries to prevent the continued genocide of Muslim peoples in those regions. And if the United States is to be condemned for its support of Israel, why did the Palestinians desire --- nay, insist upon --- U.S. involvement in the peace negotiations? What ever mistakes President Clinton may have made at Camp David, you can’t fault him for working tirelessly to craft an agreement that was fair to both sides.

If Barlas were simply trying to educate her readers about the abuses of globalization or the tendency of this country to be "the ugly American," that would be one thing. But her unremitting condemnation of the United States is flawed history. And this is an "in-your-face" article at a time when a more sensitive tone was surely called for. The ICQ’s readers deserve better.

Joel Rabinowitz
Manager, Development
Research and Tracking
Office of Institutional Advancement