Why Do They Hate Us?

slate ^ | Monday, Aug. 6, 2007 | Reza Aslan

[machogirl]

Why do they hate us?

Americans have been asking this question for nearly six years now, and for six years President Bush and his accomplices have been offering the same tired response: "They hate us for our freedoms." With every passing year, that answer becomes less convincing.

Part of the problem has to do with the question itself. Who exactly are they? Are we referring to al-Qaida and its cohorts? Are we talking about Iran, Syria, and the other nation-states whose interests in the Middle East do not properly align with America's? Or perhaps we mean Hamas, Hezbollah, or the myriad religious nationalist organizations across the Muslim world that share neither the ideology nor the aspirations of global, transnational groups like al-Qaida, but that have nevertheless been dumped into the same category: them.

[jack_napier]

. If they claim to hate gun-toting religious fanatics, look no further than the jihadists, who are 1) sexist (stonings of adulterers) 2) homophobic (executions of homosexuals) 3) racist (Darfur genocide) and 4) imperialist (trying to establish Sharia everywhere from Russia to Nigeria to the Philippines).

Anyone who attacks things with such overzealousness is secretly harboring some longing, some hidden desire. Man is weak. A man who does not accept his own failings, but instead piles them upon another is the one most at risk to becoming a slave to his own. Those who scream loudest for equality are often filled with designs that are equal in the eyes of few.

[OESY]

I know what you mean. Nancy lacked decorum.

.

[machogirl]

thank you, i don’t have to ask my kids, they are in school

[machogirl]

could you make a limerick out of that?

[machogirl]

but he’s gay??????????????

[machogirl]

i’ll have to look at this on another computer, can’t see it, maybe don’t want to see it

[machogirl]

that is a scary use of microsoft “paint”

[Rollee]

Who cares why “they” hate us? It’s not our job to educate the ignorant. I would love to be able to tell some dippy reporter why I hate “them” and have it published!