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The America of the Arab Street
(New York Times) Ed Husain - "Obama, Obama, we are all Osama" - the crowd chanted outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Sept. 11. In Egypt, 75% of Muslims do not believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks, according to a 2011 Pew poll. Many believe that it was either Israel, the U.S. government, or both. The idea that the U.S. attacked itself is buttressed by preachers in mosques, on satellite television channels and in glossy Arabic books. The West is viewed through a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories, half-truths and a selective reading of history. The U.S. and the West are widely seen as waging a war on Muslims. In most Arab countries, citizens require government permission to produce films. For many Arabs, it is inconceivable that U.S. citizens are not under the same controls. Attacking the U.S. has become part of the political culture in much of the Middle East. To challenge it is to be a labeled a "sellout," a "traitor," or a "Zionist agent," and to court social isolation. Yet the same U.S. embassies that were attacked were surrounded almost daily by long lines of people applying for visas to enter the U.S. Today, America's Muslims are freer and more prosperous than Muslims in any other part of the world. Their daily lives show that the narrative about a U.S.-Islam war is a myth. The writer is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.