CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, May 26, 2003

Frustration: a major cause for their hatred

The Yasser Arafat-supported terrorist groups: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Fatah feel they are being marginalized by the Bush “Roadmap to Peace.” Fear of being pushed aside is what prompted these minority groups to order seven homicide bombings of Israeli civilians with a 48-hour period. The fact that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians want to live side-by-side in peace is of no concern to the terrorist minority.

In these turbulent times, when minority groups cannot get their way, they restore to disruption. In the Middle East, it’s violence. By contrast, in Texas, the minority Democrats took their legislative bats and balls (and golf clubs) and fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Fortunately, the adherents of minority views in America rarely allow their frustrations to lead to violence. Probably because their frustrations are tempered by the fact that we live within the most successful society of all time.

That’s not the case with the adherents of the Radical Muslim Culture. Once cannot imagine anything more frustrating that trying to force today’s modern world back to the 14th Century when Islam flourished to the point that it ruled an empire larger than Rome.

Not that the radical Muslims are not trying. But, in every place where they have succeeded in installing the practices and institutions of 14th Century Islam, they have met with spectacular failure.

Commentator, Steven den Beste, provides some interesting insights into what has happens when 14th Century dictatorships try to compete in modern times:

“The only Arab nations which have prospered have done so entirely because of the accident of mineral wealth. Using money from the export of oil, they imported a high tech infrastructure. They drive western cars. They use western cell phones. They built western high-rise steel-frame buildings… It’s all a sham, and they know it. Everything they have which looks like modern culture was purchased. They themselves do not have the ability to produce, or even operate any of it.”

Den Beste also offers a rationale for why the Islamic dictatorships hate western civilization:“Their economies are disasters. They make no contribution to the advance of science or engineering. They make no contribution to art or culture. They have no important diplomatic power. They are not respected. Most of their people are impoverished and miserable and filled with resentment and those who are not impoverished are living a lie…

“They hate us because our culture is everything theirs is not. Our…economies are successful. Our achievements are magnificent. Our engineering and science are advancing at breathtaking speed.” (The full text of Den Beste’s commentary can be found at: www.denbeste.nu.)

Whether one agrees or not with Den Beste’s assessment of the Arab dictatorships, it needs to be said that, despite the rantings of the hate-America-Left, their problems are not of our making.

They have chosen to organize their societies along the lines of the “Loser Nations,” as described by Colonel Ralph Peters and which bear repeating here: 1. Restrictions on the flow of information. 2. The subjugation of women. 3. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure. 4. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization. 5. Domination by a restrictive religion. 6. A low valuation of education. 7. Low prestige assigned to work.

One can only imagine how frustrating it must be for the adherents of the Radical Muslim Culture to see the success of Israel and, for that matter, of the largely Christian West. But, in fairness, let us remember most Muslims are not Arabs and not all Arabs belong to the Radical Muslim Culture. Moreover, Iran is mostly Muslim, but not Arab.

Confusing? Yes. But we westerners are well advised to not paint those who attack us with too broad an ethnic or religious brush.

Meanwhile, the only choice we have is to defend ourselves and our allies against the terrorist onslaught. Conversely, the radical Muslim terrorists have two choices: either get real or perish.

William Hamilton, a nationally syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – novels about terrorist attacks on Colorado’s water supply and on the Panama Canal, respectively.

©2003. William Hamilton

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com