Western Dominations as a Menace to Islamic Supremacy - Essay Example

Western Dominations as a Menace to Islamic Supremacy This paper aims to identify and explicitly explain the key explanatory factors of anti Western sentiment as indicated in Bernard Lewis’ The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. Lewis asserts that the Islamic world is confined in an internal struggle of addressing and ultimately solving endemic problems of society, such as extreme economic inequality, poverty, and despotic governments. There is however a deeper reason than these which would explain the persistence of anti-American and Western sentiments. II. Western Domination as a Menace to Islamic Supremacy The Islamic world faces a war against Western domination, which Muslim fundamentalist movements called Wahhabism, blame all the aforementioned crises and difficulties on modernization and Western influences, without which, would have left the world in peace and in economic equitability. Thus, the Muslim fundamentalist movements advocate an unreserved rejection for the West for “causing” all these social ills to transpire due to Western influences and modernization. This rejection is expressed in their denunciation of and violence on Western countries, their interests and peoples as well as ‘impious’ Muslim people who have ‘embraced’ the Western modernization and education. Establishment of states and societies based on Islamic law and traditional mores are the end goals of the Muslim fundamentalists. This is so because Muslim fundamentalists view the world as one to be dominated by Islam, and the Western countries and peoples will waste away to give way to this domination. Thus, in this paper, the key explanatory factors that lead the Muslims towards anti-American and anti-Western sentiments are economic and political domination as well as the imperialistic culture that the United States and the West exhibit, hampering the quest of Islam religion and Muslim government towards world domination. III. The Most Important Factors for Anti-Western and Anti-American Sentiments The struggle between Western and anti-Western influences are said to have been traced since the seventh century in the expansion of Islam in the Middle East from 622 A.D. to the present. Lewis emphasized that during Muhammad’s lifetime, the Muslims were both a political and a religious community, with the Prophet as head of state who ruled the government and the people, dispensed justice, collected taxes, waged war and made peace.1 This description gives an initial knowledge that the Muslim religion is not at all a plain religion like the Christian religion now, but is also a political embodiment, a way of life, and a set of mores and traditions, which a Muslim must follow at all costs. As already mentioned, the factors that led towards anti-Western and anti-American sentiments are social, economic, and political ones. The social factors are the staggering global poverty blamed on imperialist influences by the Western countries and the United States, which Lewis covertly mentioned in his book. Extreme economic inequality and problems related to this are also viewed by Islam as being caused by Western domination. Lewis’ thesis is that Islam’s obsession with the United States is an old occurrence and constitutes the Middle East’s escalating hatred for the West.2 The anti-Western and anti-American Muslim sentiments are traced done to the antiquated dominance of Islam, which extended from Morocco to Indonesia, from Kazakhstan to Senegal. It goes back to the mission of the prophet Muhammad in Saudi Arabia during the seventh century and the creation of Islamic community and state.3 Lewis emphasizes that the abysmally low knowledge of the Americans about Islam’s venomous sentiments against the United States and the West made them baffled, as they have not taken into consideration that Muslims are defined by their history and what they have is not just religion but a political and a cultural stance as well. Lewis writes that for Osama Bin Laden, his declaration of war against the United States indicates the resurgence of the struggle for world religious dominance that surfaced in the 7th century.4 It thus goes on to say that the ‘holy’ war and the violence, which the Muslims wage against the United States is not just a terrorist stance of no form, but one that associates with a deeply rooted tradition of dominance. In the beginning, Islam used to thrive until Christianism led by the Holy Roman Empire stole this dominance and spread the Christian religion alongside economic exploration. It was not by sheer accident that the Islam spear is pointed at the United States and the West; but factors such as mentioned are the ones that ignite anti-American and anti-Western sentiments among the Muslim fundamentalists. To the Muslims in the Middle East, President Bush is just a figurehead of the various succession in a long line of rulers emanating from the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople, the Holy Roman Emperors, Queen Victoria, and other European imperialists who dominated and still dominate the world politically and economically. They are considered serious impediments to the divinely ordained expansion and resurgence of Islam in the world as they hold the global political and economic wave of influence while Islam is relegated to the sidelines. IV. Islamic Means to Crush Western and American Domination Lewis stressed that Islam, in a dire and obsessive intent to end the influence of the United States and the Western countries, opted to spread the Wahhabism – a violent sect in Saudi Arabia – through oil expansion.5 Through Saudi Arabia’s oil and money, Wahhabism or Muslim fundamentalists were able to broaden their version of Islam worldwide, which Lewis contends as belonging to isolated fringe if not for oil. The gush for Western isolation is so unyielding that Lewis states of the key role played by anti-American sentiments of other political movements in synergy with the crisis of Islam, such as socialism, German Nazism, and Soviet Marxism, causing threat of diminution to the United States and the West. The United States and the West remains Islam’s targets for violence and terrorist hurdles because they are a signification of modernization, Christianity, and advanced political machinery. In order to truly decipher the intentions of Islam, one must also understand that it is not the Christian religion per se which it is against – but the whole systemic embodiment which the West and the United States are: Imperialistic deportments, political machination, cultural trends, in which the thriving religion is Christianism, all of which the Muslim Fundamentalists want to crush in order to take over. Reference: Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam. Random House, 2004. Read More