By Joseph Shattan, author of Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War.
October 15, 2001 8:55 a.m.

One obvious reason why Middle Eastern perceptions differ so radically from our own is because the problems Arabs wrestle with are very different from the issues we focus on. For over a century, Muslims have been trying to account for what they regard as a disaster of near-cosmic proportions: Arabdom's alarming and precipitous decline. How can it be, they ask themselves, that the Arabs, despite the self-evident superiority of their religion and culture, have been overtaken and humiliated by the once-barbarous Christians and — even more embarrassingly — by the despised and dispersed Jews?

For a while, the two most widely accepted Middle Eastern answers to this agonizing riddle were Nasserism and Islamism. Nasserists believed that the Arab predicament was the result of political disunity and technological backwardness. Thus, if the Arabs set aside their political differences and united in a single state under a modernizing dictator, such as Egypt's Nasser, they would once again become a force to be reckoned with.

Islamists, on the other hand, argued that the Arabs' decline is Allah's punishment for their having abandoned the straight-and-narrow path laid out in the sharia (Islamic law). Only when corrupt Arab governments — both secular and nominally religious — are replaced by truly Islamic regimes will Arab glory be renewed.

At one time, Nasserism and Islamism were seen as genuine alternatives. Today, however, Nasserism is largely discredited. Not only did Nasser's Egypt suffer an ignominious defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, but also present day Egypt, despite $2 billion in annual U.S aid, is a social and economic basket case. As for the other "progressive" Arab dictatorships — Iraq and Syria, Algeria, and Libya — they're in even worse shape. In short, the Nasserists had their historic chance — and they blew it.

By contrast, the Islamists had their chance in the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — and to everyone's astonishment, they won. A handful of vastly outgunned jihadists (Holy Warriors) brought the fearsome Red Army to its knees. So having defeated Superpower # 2, Islamists reason, they have only to defeat Superpower #1 (America), and the whole world will be theirs.

But can a handful of jihadists seriously believe themselves capable of humbling the world's mightiest power? The Islamists derive confidence both from selected verses of the Koran ("How many times has God allowed a little troop to beat back a huge army! God is with the steadfast who persevere."), and from the memory of past victories. Just as, in the 7th century, Arab armies seized vast lands from Christendom, and established an Islamic empire that was the wonder of its day, so now a handful of steadfast and persevering jihadists will defeat a decadent America and inaugurate a new Islamic millennium.

Winning the world for Islam is the Islamists' long-term goal. Their more immediate objectives are overthrowing corrupt Arab governments and destroying the hated "Zionist entity" (Israel) whose very existence is an affront to Islamist sensibilities. (Islamists believe that any lands conquered for Islam remain Islamic forever; hence, even if there were no Palestinians, Israel would still be occupying Muslim lands.)

Unfortunately, by endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attack, the Bush administration has played into Islamist hands. Although State Department officials are undoubtedly telling the truth when they assert that the U.S. was preparing to endorse a Palestinian state even before September 11th, to the Arab "street" it will seem obvious that a cause-and-effect relationship exists between the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, on the one hand, and the President's initiative, on the other. Throughout the Middle East, Osama bin Laden will be blessed for forcing America's hand and bringing the replacement of Israel by Palestine a step closer to realization. Thanks entirely to the president and his team, the jihadist David appears to have wrested yet another major victory from the superpower Goliath — and the campaign to defeat the Islamist challenge has gotten off to a singularly inauspicious start