The Roots of American Rage: Reflections on Bernard Lewis’s The Roots of Muslim Rage and Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations

Suliman, Ahmed Hassan Mohamed Suliman

doi:10.21608/opde.2020.137197

The Roots of American Rage: Reflections on Bernard Lewis’s The Roots of Muslim Rage and Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Ahmed Hassan Mohamed Suliman Suliman

10.21608/opde.2020.137197

Abstract

"You may be accepted providing that you follow our agenda", represents the main antagonistic philosophy that Americans have frequently applied in their relationship with Muslims and Arabs. Many philosophers and thinkers claim that this antagonistic attitude towards Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, has become considerably evident in American culture since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This assumption may have some merits on the surface, however; American antagonism towards Islam and Arab Muslims has been an integral practice in American culture long before the twenty-first century. It goes back to the early nineteenth century, the period that witnessed the first Arab -American Military confrontation. Consequently, many American intellectuals produced a myriad of antagonistic discourses on Arab Muslims. In the twentieth century, the Arab Muslim-American relationship turned to be much more complicated for multiple reasons, which were all related to the implementation of the American imperialist agenda in the Middle East. Hence, antagonism and hostility towards Islam and Arab Muslims became deeply rooted in American culture and were overstressed by the intellectual production of many prominent modern American Orientalists. This study attempts to offer a critical analysis of selected modern American discourses on Islam and Arab Muslims, relying on Edward Said's anti-Orientalist approach. Discussion principally depends on analyzing Bernard Lewis and Samuel P. Huntington’s philosophy towards Islam and Arab Muslims as presented in their masterpieces The Root of Muslim Rage and The Clash of Civilizations.

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