We didn’t worry a lot about Muslims before 9/11. There were terrorist attacks, for sure, but there was no civilization-level threat here. These guys seemed like primitives who could barely put together a bomb, and our previous worry was the Soviets with world-ending nukes pointed at us. Muslims were a nuisance of places none of us wanted to visit, but not a particular concern at home.
After 9/11… things got a little weird. The average person was more worried about Muslims, but suddenly, we’re acknowledging Ramadan and President Bush is telling us, “Islam means peace” — which seemed very doubtful from our limited knowledge of it. But it seemed a popular notion that we just had to embrace Muslims and they would integrate and become a part of the West, and there would be peace. A big part of the Iraq invasion was the idea that if we just brought democracy to the Middle East, then the people there would be more like us.
It does not seem to have worked out that way.
So the question, one I don’t think we as a Western society have sufficiently grappled with, is “How much is Islam the problem?” Are we dealing with cultural problems that can eventually be overcome, or are there simply beliefs inherent to Islam that are incompatible with Western values like human rights and equality?
