(Foreign Policy) Fouad Ajami - The frenzy with which radical Islamists battle against deportation orders from U.S. soil - dreading the prospect of returning to Amman and Beirut and Cairo - reveals the lie of anti-Americanism that blows through Muslim lands. To come bearing modernism to those who want it but who rail against it at the same time - that is the American burden. With modernism come the Jews. They have been its bearers and beneficiaries, and they have paid dearly for it. Today the Jews have a singular role in U.S. public life and culture, and anti-Americanism is tethered to anti-Semitism. The U.S. need not worry about hearts and minds in foreign lands. If Muslims truly believe that their long winter of decline is the fault of the U.S., no campaign of public diplomacy shall deliver them from that incoherence.
2003-09-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive