America Envy

[David Morris]

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>Oh come now, get serious. America is exceptional. [...]
>Ever the envy of less happier lands

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/opinion/06FRIE.html

The Core of Muslim Rage
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The latest death toll in the Indian violence between Hindus and Muslims is 
544 people, many of them Muslims. Why is it that when Hindus kill hundreds 
of Muslims it elicits an emotionally muted headline in the Arab media, but 
when Israel kills a dozen Muslims, in a war in which Muslims are also 
killing Jews, it inflames the entire Muslim world?

I raise this point not to make some idiot press critique or engage in cheap 
Arab-bashing. This is a serious issue. In recent weeks, whenever Arab 
Muslims told me of their pain at seeing Palestinians brutalized by Israelis 
on their TV screens every night, I asked back: Why are you so pained about 
Israelis brutalizing Palestinians, but don't say a word about the brutality 
with which Saddam Hussein has snuffed out two generations of Iraqis using 
murder, fear and poison gas? I got no good answers.

Because the real answer is rooted in something very deep. It has to do with 
the contrast between Islam's self-perception as the most ideal and complete 
expression of the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity 
and Islam — and the conditions of poverty, repression and underdevelopment 
in which most Muslims live today.

As a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East said to me, Israel — not Iraq, not 
India — is "a constant reminder to Muslims of their own powerlessness." How 
could a tiny Jewish state amass so much military and economic power if the 
Islamic way of life — not Christianity or Judaism — is God's most ideal 
religious path?





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