Arab Attitudes

By Alan Caruba

According to a recent Zogby poll taken in Arab nations, “The United States is viewed less favorably in much of the Arab world today than it was during the final year of the Bush administration and President Obama is less popular in the region than Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

The poll results were released by the Arab American Institute, described as a “nonpartisan research and advocacy group.” Yeah, I believe that, don’t you? The poll was conducted by the Zogby organization and James Zogby is the president of the Institute.

There are Christians and Jews born in Arab nations, but when I speak of Arabs it is exclusively those who are Muslim.

The fact is that I don’t believe anything Arabs say on any day about anything. Yes, I am biased, but as the phrase goes, “Everything I know about Islam I learned on 9/11.” Mumbai, India has just suffered a second terrorist attack and it really doesn’t matter who’s specifically to blame because it is Muslims who committed it.

The fact is that on any given day you can read headlines or hear stories of Arabs committing murder and mayhem on one another and on what they call “non-believers.” The Syrian despot is shooting people in the streets where they are calling for his overthrow. We learned that Osama bin Laden was plotting a 9/11 anniversary attack on the U.S. A bomber struck at funeral service for the assassinated brother of Afghanistan’s president. And on and on and on.

How many people do Arabs have to kill before we get around to figuring out that Islam is a murderous cult that has been killing each other since the Sunni/Shiite schism shortly after the death of Mohammad and killing everyone else who would not convert or pay extortion?

I am also thoroughly sick of a White House that steadfastly keeps trying to get Americans to be more tolerant and understanding of Muslims, here and abroad. Ask any European what it is like when their Muslim population reaches a point where it begins to demand that everyone else accept Sharia law and behave like a Muslim.

Why should anyone be tolerant of the Palestinians when a recent survey revealed that 73% of those surveyed agreed that Jews, i.e., Israelis, should be annihilated?

Ask them why there are whole sections of major European cities where non-Muslims dare not venture, including the police. In parts of London and across England, Islamists are creating “Sharia law enforcement zones. As this is written, Muslim enclaves are being established all around America and, of course, some want to build a mosque within a short walk of Ground Zero in New York City.

The West should stop pretending that Islam isn’t better described as a totalitarian political entity than an alleged religious one. When not being ruled by or trying to overthrow dictators throughout the Middle East and northern Africa, the human rights track record of Arab or Muslim nations is deplorable. In January 2010, Freedom House released its annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, “Freedom in the World 2010.”

According to Freedom House, “The Middle East remained the most repressive region in the world” followed by Africa that had “suffered the most significant declines.”

“The most repressive region in the world” and the Arab American Institute tells us to be concerned that “In 2008, only nine percent of Egyptians had a favorable attitude toward the United States” and that Barack Obama’s popularity “has plummeted to just five percent. Recall, it was Obama who led off his term with a speech in Cairo, quoting “the holy Koran”, during his concerted outreach to the Arabs of the Middle East.

Similar data reflected less favorable attitudes toward the U.S. in Morocco, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates since the end of the Bush administration. According to the poll results, Arabs are more favorable to Iran these days and it is a Persian theocratic thugocracy. Arabs respect the threat and use of power.

George W. Bush was under the impression that Iraq could be dragged into being a democratic nation if the U.S. would do them the favor of capturing Saddam Hussein so he could be hanged by his victims. He also believed that Afghanistan, a Stone Age nation, could be coaxed into modernity if the U.S. just killed enough Taliban.

With considerable irony, Barack Obama has managed to get the U.S. involved in a civil war in Libya for the same purpose, the removal of Muammar Gadhafi. In the process he revealed the weakness of NATO while “leading from behind.”

Obama’s singular “success” in the Middle East has been to authorize the assassination of Osama bin Laden, for which he took full credit without mentioning the years of intelligence gathering that preceded it, nor his predecessor.

Published initially in 2010 and now reissued as a paperback edition, in “A Privilege to Die” by Thanassis Cambanis, the author reports that “Hezbollah has inculcated millions—including many beyond Lebanon’s borders—into its ideology of Islamic Resistance, which is coupled to an unusually effective operation program. That recipe has put Hezbollah in the pilot’s seat in the Middle East, steering the region into a thicket of wars to come.”

If the West does not come to Israel’s defense, it will seal its own doom for generations to come. The Arabs in particular and 1.3 billion Muslims in general don’t like us much and would like to see a mosque on every corner of every city and town in America, including just down the street from Ground Zero.

© Alan Caruba, 2011