The Middle-East: Anti-American?

Today we mark 8 days since the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other members of the US diplomatic mission to Libya. On Tuesday, September 11, 2012, the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, Libyan protestors stormed the US embassy in the city of Benghazi, setting fire to the complex and killing 4 Americans. Since then anti-American protests have erupted across the middle-east in over a dozen countries. In most countries police failed to adequately protect US and other Western embassies and consulates.

The late US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

Many of these protests have been attributed to the short film “Innocence of Muslims” produced by Sam Bacile. In this video, Mohammad is depicted as a pimp, a killer and a child-molester. When interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bacile said his film is “a political effort to call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam.” Whatever the motive of this film, the results of it have been disastrous.

In the past week, the US media, alongside many US citizens and people around the world, have been questioning the willingness of many countries to protect US and Western interests in the Middle-East. It is widely believed that everyone in the Middle-East except for Israel hates America and that all of Islam is Anti-American. This case of Islamaphobia, the term used by Brian McLaren to describe American fear and hatred of Islam, is misdiagnosed. To say that all of the Arabs and Muslims hate the US would be simply wrong. To put these two distinct groups into one group is a mistake in of itself but that’s another issue. It is important to recognize that these attacks were perpetrated by a small group of extremists and not by Islam or the Arab world as a whole.

Recently, video surfaced of the last minutes of Ambassador Stevens’ life. It shows a group of Libyans rescuing him from the burning building and bringing him to a hospital. There, it is reported that a Libyan doctor worked for close to an hour to try and revive him. This video is evidence that not all Libyans are Anti-American. We should not take the actions of a few as the opinion of the majority.

In a recent blog post, Fareed Zakaria, a CNN contributor, makes the point that it is not that the Arab countries are unwilling to protect American interests but rather that they are unable. As a result of the recent Arab Spring, many Middle-Eastern countries are unable to fully control their citizens and their countries. Before we criticize these countries maybe we should help them so that next time they are able to protect us.