Why Are We at War? Read Free

was studying American literature. One of the students asked me, “Isthere anything in our economy that compares to American economy?” I said, “Yes. Your McDonald’s are better than ours.” And they loved it. They were delighted. They had something they could do that was better than us. It was as if Brooklyn College were playing the University of Nebraska in football. The score had been one hundred to nothing, but then they kicked a field goal—it’s now one hundred to three. And the Brooklyn College stands went crazy. So, by the same token, those are the people—and these are the young people in Moscow—who are reacting positively to American corporate culture.
    Now think of all the other people in Russia who hate the very thought that not only were they bankrupted by the United States, not only were they betrayed by a communism that many of them had believed in, but now on top of it they’re being culturally invaded by these people with their money-grubbing notions of food. And, worse, the young love it. The young are leaving them. So the hatred toward America intensifies.
    Now, take the West’s cultural invasion into Islam. The Muslim reaction is that Islam is endangered by modern technology and corporate capitalism. They see everything in America as aiming to destroy the basis of Islam. The huge freedom given to women in American culture is seen as an outrage by orthodox Muslims. American TV they find licentious in the extreme. They feel all that Islam stands for is going to be eroded by American culture. So, to repeat: The core of the hatred of Muslims toward us is the fear that they’re going to lose their own people to Western values. Maybe half the people in Muslim countries may want secretly to be free of Islam. And so the ones who retain the old religion become extreme in response. Many Muslims can put Christian fundamentalists to shame by the intensity of their belief. It’s an interesting belief, after all.
    There is one fascinating element in Islam, which is the idea that all Muslims are equal before God, a tremendous egalitarian concept. Like all organized religion, Islam ends up being theperversion of itself in practice. Just as in Christianity, compassion is supposed to be the greatest good, but its present exercise in the world seems to be a study in military power and greed. In Islam, no Muslim has the right to consider himself superior to another Muslim. What happens in reality is that you have oppressive societies run for the wealthy, with the poor getting less and less—tremendous economic inequalities in many a Muslim society. And tyrannical people in the seats of power.
    Now, of course, the Koran, like the Old and New Testaments, has something in it for everyone. You can run north, run south, blow east, you can blow west. But there have been numerous revolutions within Islam over the centuries to restore its original beliefs. There is no understanding of Islam until one recognizes that Muslims who are truly devoted feel they are in a direct relationship with God. Their Islamic culture is the most meaningful experience of their lives, and their culture is being infiltrated. They feel thekind of outrage toward us that, let’s say, a good Catholic would know if a black mass were performed in his church.
DOTSON RADER : But if that’s true, if that’s what the motivation is about, then there’s no fixing it.
NORMAN MAILER : There’s no quick fix. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this is a war between those who believe the advance of technology is the best solution for human ills and those who believe that we got off the track somewhere a century ago, two centuries ago, five centuries ago, and we’ve been going in the wrong direction ever since, that the purpose of human beings on earth is not to obtain more and more technological power but to refine our souls. This is the deep divide that now goes on, even with many Americans. You know, what does it