A friend passed our post A Moderate Muslim Perspective on to a Muslim friend of his and received this reply:
This is our response which we've edited just a little:
I have to say that I don't understand what your Muslim friend is getting at in the passage where he says:
Unfortunately, attacking them [Muslims] is only reinforcing their teachings. Namely, that the west is intent on reestablishing colonialism and are willing to use violence to do it (as they did before). Most of those people have heard all of the horror stories about western rule and have no desire to return to it. Anyone fighting against the west is going to be perceived as a hero, no matter how sketchy a human being he is. If we want them to stop attacking us, we have to stop attacking them. It seems pretty simple to me.This is very difficult for me to make any sense of. The U.S. has come to the defense of Muslims far more often than it has attacked them. In Kuwait, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia, Americans died to defend Muslims, sometimes against putative Christians. In none but the first of these was there any real national interest at stake.
The Islamists expressed their gratitude by attacking the U.S.S. Cole, the WTT, Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and various other targets around the world until they succeeded in murdering 3000 of our citizens on September 11th, 2001. Following 9/11 Americans fought and died in liberating fifty million Muslims from crushing oppression in Afghanistan and Iraq and did far more than anyone else in the world, when all charitable and military aid is factored in, to relieve the suffering of Muslims in the Indian Ocean basin in the wake of the tsunami. All the oil-besotted Muslim nations put together didn't contribute as much to disaster relief as did the U.S. And still the radical Muslims hate us.
Your friend says that they hate us because we're trying to colonize them, but where is the evidence of that? Did we stay in Kuwait? Did we not leave Saudi Arabia when the Saudis insisted? Did we colonize Afghanistan? If all we wanted was oil why didn't we invade the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq? It would have been much easier.
Their hatred, in my opinion, has nothing to do with the fact that we're "attacking" them. It has everything to do with the fact that we are "infidels", our values are not their values, and, to their enormous chagrin, the infidels are a lot more powerful and successful than they are. It has also to do with the fact that we are all that stands in their way of realizing their dream of destroying Israel and Islamicizing the globe. As long as these facts remain they will continue to seek to destroy us. Their religion and their pride demand it.
