Essay

Media in the west express themselves at present frightened over the extent of the hate, which can induce terrorists of the Islamic faith to acts, which threaten to cost thousands the life and to destroy our economic bases. At the same time many Muslims try to arrive into the west, in order to develop itself there a future worth living, which does not stand for them in its homeland because of civil wars, political suppression or from economic emergency in prospect. Are Muslims thus irrational per se, how it suggests so some comment of these days?
Scene change: Summer 1982 in Beirut in Lebanon. The western part of the city is occupied of Israeli troops. Before a block of flats a tank stands. An Israeli soldier stretched with exposed torso in order to take a sun bath. An Arab passes on the way, and the soldier spit of him from above. My wife makes it dismays reproaching, but the soldier answers: "what want you? The Arabs are our Indians." The Palestinians - Muslims such as Christians among them - are exposed for decades and paradoxically strengthened since the conclusion of the Osloer of contracts in May 1994 and in September 1995 daily small and large humiliating, quite to be silent of the economic and social consequences now already since 1967 to lasting occupation. This and their desperate rearing up, which expresses itself in in the long run helpless acts of desperation, in the meantime on both sides to irrational hate led.
Despite all disagreement between the Islamic states a not only verbal stated, but also deeply emotional solidarity feeling prevails among its citizens. This above all if a material or alleged threat is felt from the outside, from another culture area. Israel belonged in Arab and Muslim eyes another culture area the west dominated by the USA, and is regarded on, i.e. than last position of the "western imperialism" or the Christian Kreuzfahrertums".
Scene change: At the end of of 1990. The USA send troops for August to Saudi Arabia, in order to sell the Iraqis from Kuweit. The fundamentalism-journal "Al-Sabah" in Cairo leaves to the Arabs acclamations in a heading US president George Bush senior: "here we are again Saladin!". And 1994, when the Serbs besiege the city Sarajevo, are in "aluminium-Ahram", the most important Egyptian and no Islamic extremism suspect daily paper to read the Headline: "Sarajevo, the
new Granada?"
The Islamic and in the special measure the Arab world is since beginning 20. Century, when first above all seizes the British and Frenchmen, since the establishment of Israel also ever more substantially the USA intervened in the Near East, of deep cultural disconcertion. Arab young people in the school one mediates, which superiority for many centuries possessed its culture in the Mediterranean area, which mental and scientific realizations it arranged for the Christian evening country underdeveloped at that time. And therefore they ask themselves, why the civilization weight turned itself now in the opposite. Preachers and conspiracy theoreticians make two causes responsible primarily for the inferiority and the material emergency dominant in most Islamic states: on the one hand a conspiracy of the west with the goal of
destroying the Islamic world; on the other hand the own betrayal of the original Islamic values, whereby there is this theologically uneducated preachers, wherein these values lie. Thus also the quoted heading explains itself. Saladin, that Muslim Sultan, which served Lessing in "Nathan and the wise man" still as model for a tolerant statesman, applies in the Arab area as Heros, which drove the Christian cross drivers out 1187 from Jerusalem and the holy country owing to its strong faith. Thus will also today succeed with appropriate religious determination to drive out Israel and thus the west from the holy country and at all from the Islamic world. Also Granada has a symbol character for the Arab sphere, was nevertheless this city in the Andalusia a shining expression of Islamic-Arab culture. With their conquest 1492 and driving the Muslims out (and Jews!) in the indication of the Christian Inquisition over 700 years went Muslim epoch Andalusia to end. Equating of Granada and Sarajevo, carried out in the mentioned headline, should suggest that conquest Sarajevos will mean also eliminating the Muslims on the Balkans - as Christian conquest Granadas the final displacement of the Muslims from Spain introduced. Arguing with centuries-old events as voucher for a conspiracy always lasting against the Islamic world is only with difficulty comprehensible in the west. In it one shows up in thinking creditor of Muslims embodied unbroken historical perception, a welfare history, which began with Mohammed, until today persists and must against western hegemonialpolitics be defended. This anti-western basic attitude connects itself with the conception
of the modern betrayal of the own religion and does not make also before own governments not stop, particularly if they take pro-Western positions as for instance Jordan or Egypt. It does not occasionally even make stop before the Muslim fellow citizens, who already completely of taghrib, the sympathy and living conditions of the west, filled and of almanija, is
infected the Sekularism. The ultrareligioese zealot Anear al-Gundi, which worked for the sixties as essayist and a literary critic in Egypt, saw even the decay of the Islamic world into numerous member states in the long run as work of a western conspiracy.

At least publicly Gundi however never requested to acts of violence. On the other hand Sajjid Kutb, also it continued a former literary critic (thus no theologian) and one of the ideological pulling fathers of the modern fundamentalist terror, a step. It designated end of the fifties dropped back in one of its works the Egyptian government under Gamal Abd, developed in the prison, it-wetter and demanded the Egyptian society than into the " before-Islamic Barbarei " (dschahilija) and the armed fight for re-establishment alone the God being entitled rule force (hakimija). Kutb, which its agitation finally with the life paid and whose works belong today to the obligation reading of each relevant terrorist, did not see naturally the " before-Islamic Barbarei " also in the western world walten, " human values more possess, with which she could convince their own conscience of their right of existence".
In dozens books particularly for the eighties radical-Islamic authors this alleged worthlessness of the west angeprangert. The reader, that does not know the west from own opinion, must win the impression
- that in the there democracies all moral conceptions were lost, which prevails pure materialism, the egoism all acting certainly and criminality is normality
- that the drug and consumption of alcohol this world will anyway soon destroy,
- that before the background a general Promiskuitaet all family structures in dissolution are understood,
- that the women move half naked by the roads and are free game for everyone,
- that the west constantly upon it reflect, not only militarily, but also by publicising his democracy and the export of its Unwerte the Islamic world also into the moral the western world it is inevitable with which Samuel Huntington with its Clash OF Civilizations thesis receives from not expected side support.
In view of such abstruse, simplifizierender and plakativer enemy and hate pictures it is nearly amazing that still a minority in the Islamic sphere represents its extreme-estremists and dazzled trailers. In addition, the deliberated majority in approaching and the middle east, which the omissions and erroneous trends within the political and social range recognize and which model of the western democracy with its as strict a separation from religion and state as possible quite regards as worthwhile alternative, expresses often entitled criticism at western behaviors. The west should take it seriously. This alone can create the condition for the fact that after the military strike of the USA which is forthcoming a peaceful development of this region can be introduced. Most frequent point of criticism of this moderate majority the lying and occasionally also the simple hypocrisy of the western Middle East policy is:
- why the west leaves due to the memory of the barbarian Holocaust Israel with the suppression of the Palestinians to grant, so that these victims of the victims of the Holocaust to become, at whom it no debt meets?
- why Israel, which ignored dozens of UN resolutions and even such, which carried the USA, not pulled to the account like every other state?
- why the west demands the introduction of democratic structures in the Near East and brands several states because of alleged support of activities of terror as " rogue States of ", while for instance Saudi Arabia, which so far not the breath of a democratization touched and did not support that the substantial development of extreme-extremists terror movements as for example the Taliban, from transparent economic interest is gehaetschelt and maintained?
In order also not to drive this majority still the terrorist into the arms, it applies, to take such questions seriously. The west and Israel must seize the hands, which against-stretch Arafat in Palestine and Chatami for them in Iran. It applies to down-tear the barrier long of the picture strengthened in the heads on both sides from the Clash OF Civilizations and to again-arouse in place of blind hate a climate of the confidence.

Gernot Rotter is professor for present-referred Orien-Science at the institute for Asia Africa of the university in Hamburg since 1984. 1980 to 1984 he was a director of the German Orient institute in Beirut, 1987 to 1991 state parliament delegate that becoming green in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Rotter, 60 years old, is a CO author of: " Middle East encyclopedia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of A - Z"

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