Why Do They Hate Us?

By Dan

After 9/11 this seemed to be the question. "Why do Muslims hate us?" In attempting to answer this question it might help to try on a little empathy. Consider the influence that the world you live in has had on you; your childhood, what you see as acceptable and unacceptable, right and wrong, that sort of thing. Regardless of your worldview, or its logical consistency and source, you do have some inner standard by which you attempt to live. And within that standard are right and wrong which include behaviors and actions that you inwardly or outwardly become indignant about.


The Muslim is no different. He was raised from childhood in a setting that appealed to a standard sourced from his Koran along with other writings depending on the particular strain of his upbringing. He either inwardly or outwardly becomes indignant when he sees lifestyles and beliefs that differ from all he has ever known, such as the images he sees coming out of the West.

For the true Muslim, western society embodies everything he knows to be profanity and debauchery. Feminism, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, the rejection of family, no fear of, but instead mocking of, his God, unruly children and so on are all part and parcel to the eastern Muslim's view of the West. Even the West's cowardice in the face of their terror is reason for contempt.

And then there's Christianity. Christianity, as well as all other religions, are hated because they are seen as false. But perhaps Christianity is worse because it is not differentiated from the West and its debauchery in the Muslim mind. If there was one favor president Obama did for Christians, I think, it was when he proclaimed that America was no longer a Christian nation¹. Of course the Muslim is not buying it. With images like the one below emanating out of the West, why should he?

I can empathize with the Muslim to a degree. Indeed we both believe in the existence of objective reality. Unlike the Muslim, however, I live in the midst of this strange new world; a world completely alien to the one I experienced as a child. In fact, it was the onslaught of this new world, a world that no longer had any external bearings as to right and wrong, that drove me to seek objective reality. I found it in the person of Jesus.

Left to my flesh, indeed my old self, once my living conditions were reduced to having nothing to lose, I might do what Muslims do in some cause equally dear to my heart. But scripture paints a larger picture. It points in a different direction altogether, one opposite my own natural and fleshy inclinations. I am told to love my enemies, and to pray for them, not walk into a market strapped with explosives and kill them. Still, that Christian tolerance² is rejected, both by the Muslim who sees it as weakness, and the secularist who assumes all religions are the same. The reality remains that since authentic Christianity is the one and only true religion, the evil world will never contort itself to be as tolerant of it as it has Islam³. Evil, at its core, does not tolerate, but rejects, good. (Matt 5:11-12, John 3:19-21)

Yet the most fascinating thing of all with this question is the blindness of those who ask it. They will assume and blame everything, it would appear, except the profane world they have created, and in which they are now so immersed it is no longer visible. This mindset can only conclude that it is the disparity in the allocation of resources that make them hate us. The fact that a people would love their children so much that they would choose poverty and violence over an affluent world that rejoices in the "liberty" that has its young piercing, mutilating and tattooing itself while freely supporting and engaging in sodomy and fornication confounds those who are asking this question, because they are secularists. The answer they provide for themselves is understandably a materialistic one imagined by a purely materialistic and secular mindset and then projected onto the Muslim.

But for those who have the eyes to see it the answer is a simple one: they hate us because we are vile.

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^{Note 1} I know I may get some push back for this. But please consider this: the laws of the land still allow for the slaughter of millions of unborn human beings every year. Some states have redefined marriage in the law books for homosexuals while heterosexuals are increasingly rejecting it. The number of these states is almost certain to grow. Our schools have become cauldrons of secular humanism, environment worship, and sensuality, and our society is bearing the fruit of that seed. These are not the fruits of a Christian nation. We do Jesus and Christianity no favors or service by insisting that America is such a nation.

^{Note 2} Tolerance defined as tolerance, not acceptance.

^{Note 3} In a particular discussion in the past I simply asked someone, "Do you think the nation would be bending itself over backward right now to paint Christianity in a positive light if the hijackers had been Christians"? You could see the light come on in her mind. She knew better. We all do.