**Social Identity and the Roots of Future Conflict**

by Stuart J. Kaufman, Associate Professor

Department of Political Science

University of Kentucky

#### October, 2003

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

**Social Identity and the Roots of Future Conflict**

Identity conflicts are, and will remain for decades to come, the most
important source of international violence and war in the world.
According to one count, there were 59 ongoing ethnic rebellions in the
world in 1999.[^1] Most of the key flash points around the
world--Taiwan, Kashmir, Palestine, etc.--are unstable less because of
the tangible interests the states have at stake than because the issues
are articles of faith in the groups' nationalist ideologies. China, for
example, has been willing to live for decades without *de facto* control
over Taiwan, but has made clear that it would resort to war to prevent
*de jure* Taiwanese independence. International terrorism, too, is
motivated primarily by identity issues--Muslim fundamentalism and
Palestinian nationalism most prominently, but also Pakistani irredentist
nationalism in Kashmir, Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka, and so on.

Since these conflicts are about identity--or, more precisely, groups'
notions about their identity--understanding and tracking them requires a
focus on the intangibles of group attitudes and organizations more than
on "hard" information about military spending or economic trends. For
the intelligence community, this requires more immersion in the cultures
of target groups, more study of their media and even popular literature,
and more polling and surveys. The key questions to answer in identifying
long-term instability--identifying *where* identity conflict is likely
to break out--are as follows. First, who is identified in each group's
nationalist mythology as the national enemy, and how harsh is that
presentation? Second, how severely under threat does the group perceive
itself to be? Short-term factors making conflict more likely at a given
time--identifying *when* identity conflict is likely to break
out--include political instability, the emergence of extremist leaders,
and economic downturns.

In this paper, I will do the following. First, I present a framework for
analysis of identity conflict aimed at closing the gap between the
policy community's intuitive understanding of the problem and the logic
it uses for policy analysis and prescription, and offer some
prescriptions for focusing intelligence collection and analysis to
optimize the ability to forecast and track such conflicts. I then
illustrate the application of this framework for understanding key
identity conflicts in the Middle East--Islamist terrorism and the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I conclude with a few tentative forecasts
on the future of those conflicts.

**Identity Conflict is Symbolic Politics**

On no issue is the divide between political science and policy practice
wider than on the notion that politics can be understood as "rational".
Columnist Paul Krugman memorably published an article on election eve,
2002, headlined, "Stop Making Sense," urging readers to vote in spite of
political science theories that assume voting to be irrational. And
foreign policy makers dealing with conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern
Europe, and elsewhere repeat as a mantra the understanding that "these
are not rational actors".

Yet when it comes to making foreign policy and analyzing policy
outcomes, the policy community oddly adopts this very notion of
rationality. Foreign statesmen are often urged to adopt the course seen
as most rational from the U.S. standpoint, and the likely effectiveness
of these policies is projected on the assumption that they will be
implemented by rational legislatures and bureaucracies, and complied
with by mass publics regardless of any potential cultural barriers. The
result is peace proposals that either cannot be accepted or cannot be
implemented, economic reform plans undone by corruption or mass
opposition, and so on.

What is missing in these cases is the recognition that, especially in
case of identity conflict, foreign politicians are often engaged in
*symbolic politics*--i.e., in using symbols to manipulate the emotions
of their audiences for their own political purposes, rather than in
promoting any national interest. The logic of symbolic politics is as
follows:

1.  Ethnic, national or religious identities are built on myths that
    define who is a group member, what it means to be a group member,
    and, typically, who the group's enemies are. These myths are usually
    based on truth but are selective or exaggerated in their
    presentation of history.[^2] Their role is to specify, for example,
    that French and Spaniards, though they share the same religion, are
    different nations because of their different languages; while Serbs
    and Croats, sharing a language, are different nations because of
    their different religions.

2.  These mythologies give rise to emotionally-laden symbols that
    politicians can use to gain support and rouse their followers'
    feelings--for example, Milosevic's 1989 visit to Kosovo Field,[^3]
    Israeli politicians' references to the Holocaust, or Malaysian Prime
    Minister Mahathir Mohammed's recent anti-Semitic remarks to the OIC
    conference.

3.  Ingroup-outgroup psychology typically leads people to see
    competition with other groups as competitions for esteem or status,
    so groups often feel emotionally that the other group's gain is
    automatically their own loss, and vice versa. Emotion-laden status
    competition also leads to exaggerated threat perceptions, so groups
    are likely to see threats in all-or-nothing terms as threatening the
    existence of their group.[^4]

Understanding *where* identity conflict is likely to arise or continue
therefore requires understanding where group myths and fears are
especially powerful, and especially hostile to some other group. For
example, the vicious racist ideology propounded in Rwanda for three
decades by Hutu governments was the necessary precondition for making
the 1994 genocide possible. Hutu fears of Tutsis were intensified in the
early 1990s by the invasion of Rwanda by the Tutsi-led Rwandese Popular
Front (RPF), and by the coup and massacre of Hutu by Tutsis in next-door
Burundi in 1993. These myths and fears together enabled extremist elites
inside and outside government--including but not only in the media--to
put genocide on the Rwandan agenda in 1993-94 by evoking the myth of
past Tutsi domination and branding the RPF rebels and all Tutsi as
"cockroaches" who needed to be exterminated. Rwanda's economic crisis of
the time, and international pressure on its government to liberalize,
added to the crisis atmosphere and gave its threatened elites incentives
to take drastic action.[^5]

To generalize from this illustration:

1.  The long-term indicator that identity violence is likely is
    nationalist (or religious) myths justifying hostility against
    another group. These myths are easily discernable in the national
    media, school curricula, official government documents and speeches,
    popular literature and history, etc. The more hostile the myths or
    ideology, the more likely violence is to occur, and the more severe
    it is likely to be.

2.  The medium-term indicators suggesting increased likelihood of
    identity-driven violence in a state are evidence of fears of group
    extinction, economic crisis, and a political transition that creates
    the opportunity for extremists to mobilize.

3.  The short-term indicator that identity-driven violence may be
    imminent is the emergence of extremist elites who successfully
    mobilize support by playing on emotionally-laden hostile myths and
    stoking ethnic fears in pursuit of political support for themselves.

**The Puzzle of Islamist Terrorism**

Why have extremist Islamist groups launched a campaign of terrorism
against the United States, while other groups with grievances against
the U.S. have not? U.S. influence in Latin America is even more
pervasive and longstanding than it is in the Middle East, yielding
numerous complaints about U.S. policy stalling Latin economic progress
and infringing political autonomy. U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia and
Egypt has not been notably less friendly than its policy toward Mexico
and Venezuela--including longstanding support for corrupt and repressive
regimes--yet it is the former two countries that produced virtually all
of the September 11 attackers, while the latter have not produced any
significant violence against the U.S. Why?

Indeed, the question can be expanded: why are Islamist groups so
disproportionately responsible for terrorism worldwide? Samuel
Huntington was heavily criticized for writing about "Islam's bloody
borders" in his writings, but his evidence shows that Muslim countries
and groups are more likely to engage in violent conflict than members of
other groups.[^6] The same is true of international terrorism: in 1998,
for example, the majority of the 741 people killed in international
terrorist incidents, according to the U.S. Department of State, were
killed by Islamist groups--primarily by al Qaeda in the bombings of the
U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, but also by Islamist groups
in India, Islamist Kashmiri separatists, and Islamist groups in
Uganda.[^7] While there are other violent terrorist groups--the Tamil
Tigers of Sri Lanka, non-Muslim groups in India, and (until recently)
UNITA in Africa produced particularly large body counts--the fact
remains that in recent years, most of the killing has been done by
Islamists. In the last year or two, beside 9/11, the suicide bombings in
Israel and attacks in India by Kashmiri Islamists would likely account
for most of the terrorist body count. The "War on Terrorism" is,
therefore, appropriately focused on groups motivated by extreme
interpretations of Islam. But why are there so many such groups, and
such violent ones?

One explanation, commonly propounded in both Europe and the Middle East
itself, is that these terrorist campaigns represent understandable
reactions against highly objectionable U.S. and Israeli policies,
especially the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the
economic sanctions on Iraq. Yet again, however, this argument begs the
question: why do these particular policies provoke so violent a
reaction? U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, for example, are more
harmful and less justifiable than U.N. sanctions against Iraq, yet they
provoke no violent response. Similarly, Turkey has much less national
security justification for its occupation of northern Cyprus, and Syria
less justification for its occupation of Lebanon, than Israel does for
occupying the West Bank; yet again, the international outcry on these
issues is muted and there is no terrorist response.

**The symbolic politics of identity conflict in the Middle East**

Both the puzzle of Islamist terrorism and the intractability of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are best understood through the prism of
symbolic politics, and in particular, though a focus on the group myths
and fears that motivate group action. The Israeli nationalist narrative
emphasizes the necessity of a state of Israel as a refuge for world
Jewry after the mortal threat of the Holocaust, and portrays the Arabs
as relentless and ruthless opponents of Israel's existence. The
Palestinian narrative in parallel fashion places the Catastrophe of 1948
at the center of the national identity, casting Israelis as the people
who unjustly inflicted that national catastrophe, who remain the major
obstacle to Palestinian statehood, and who continue to threaten the very
existence of the Palestinian nation. Both groups see themselves as the
aggrieved victim threatened with obliteration, both require security
guarantees the other is unable or unwilling to grant, and so the result
is a security dilemma in which each side's "self-defense" harms and
threatens the other.

Some specialists on Islam, most notably Bernard Lewis and Malise
Ruthven, have proposed a closely parallel account of the motivation for
Islamic fundamentalism and the anti-American terrorism it has
spawned.[^8] This argument focuses on the competition over group status,
more specifically on a particular aspect of wounded Muslim pride which
psychologists might call status inconsistency. Islamists are aware that
they are heirs to a great and advanced civilization, which was
generating advances in science and literature while Europe was sunk in
the Dark Ages, and that indeed remained superior to Western achievement
for a thousand years. Some strands of Sunni thought, in what Ruthven
calls the "argument from manifest success," argue that this past glory
demonstrates the superiority of Islamic over western civilization. But
if material success is the criterion, such thinkers cannot explain away
the obvious western material superiority of the last few centuries.

The result, Lewis and Ruthven argue, is a mixture of hate and resentment
aimed against the West--and particularly against the U.S., the current
leader of the West--for posing this challenge to the axiomatically
believed Islamic superiority: if you cannot surpass the West, the
thinking goes, destroy it. Lewis emphasizes the irrationality of this
impulse, pointing out that in 1979, a mob in Islamabad attacked U.S.
government offices in response to violence by Iranian pilgrims and Saudi
authorities in the Grand Mosque in Mecca--an event that had no
connection at all to the U.S. Ruthven suggests that this logic helps
explain why Muslims with advanced technical training, such as Osama bin
Laden and Mohammed Atta, may be attracted to extremist Islamic thought.
It is such technical experts who are confronted with the logical
inconsistency in its starkest form: the obvious value of western
technical achievements, on which they are dependent for their
livelihoods, versus the unacceptability of the western values. This
includes a fundamental contradiction of epistemologies: Cartesian doubt
as the basis of scientific advance, as opposed to theological certitude
of the eternal truth of the Koran.

A second fundamental cultural clash involves social mores, especially
those related to sexuality and the status of women. The West represents
liberated attitudes toward sexuality and female equality, values
strongly displayed in exported cultural products such as film and
television. Religious fundamentalists see such cultural exports as a
sort of spiritual pollution. What Lewis and Ruthven emphasize is the
fundamental importance of this challenge to ordinary Muslims. Lewis
writes that for many an ordinary Muslim, "the last straw was the
challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and
rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage
against these alien, infidel and incomprehensible forces that had . . .
disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home
was inevitable."[^9] In other words, the fundamental sources of many
Muslim men's self-esteem--not only their group pride as Muslims, but
also their honor as individual men--is threatened by the values of
sexual liberation embodied in Western cultural products.

Ruthven focuses also on attitudes toward sexuality itself. The trouble,
he suggests, stems from the incompatibility between the sexual
titillation spread by western culture, and the unavailability-- indeed,
unacceptability--of any legitimate sexual gratification for unmarried
young men. The result, he argues, is a disproportionate Puritanical
effort to clamp down on sexual expression as a reaction against western
cultural power. A 1981 Iranian law codifying Islamic law, for example,
focused 107 out of its 195 provisions on regulating sexual conduct. Some
of the young men who have the most difficulty handling this sexual
tension, Ruthven argues, turn their frustration outward against the
forces that put them in such an untenable situation--the West, and
especially the U.S.--through violent means if necessary.

A third point Ruthven makes is that extreme Islamist ideology has not
only some plausibility and appeal to many Muslims, but also a powerful
institutional base in the Saudi regime, which has been assiduously
promoting and exporting this ideology for decades. There should be no
mistake about what this ideology says; one Saudi-funded publication puts
it this way: "The unbelievers, idolaters and others like them must be
hated and despised . . . \[The\] Qur'an \[forbids\] taking Jews and
Christians as friends, and that applies to every Jew and every
Christian".[^10] According to one study, most publishing houses in Cairo
and Beirut are subsidized by fundamentalist Wahhabi organizations which
block their publication of moderate Sufi works and promote publication
of extreme Islamist messages in the West, so that, according to one
(possibly exaggerated) estimate, 80% of mosques in the U.S. are "under
the control of Wahhabi imams who preach extremism".[^11] Of course, the
U.S. also played a role in promoting these views, as CIA funding for the
*mujahidin* in Afghanistan was channeled through the Pakistani ISI
overwhelmingly to extreme Islamist groups rather than more moderate or
traditional resistance groups. The point, however, is the same: that the
extremist ideology that feeds anti-Western terrorism is widespread not
only because it is popular, but because it is propagandized by the
powerful. These are the sources of the myths justifying hostility to the
West.

The same can be said for anti-Israeli sentiment which, in much of the
Muslim world, is by now a pervasive ideology of anti-Semitism that
repeats most of the themes of Nazi propaganda: this anti-Semitism, too,
is institutionalized in government-run media and statements by
government officials across the Middle East. The Iranian leader, the
Ayatollah Khamenei, in spring 2001 referred to the Israeli government
this way: "the Zionist regime, as the symbol of bloodthirstiness \[and\]
barbarianism," and to its leaders as "wild beasts". Lest the point be
missed, in another remark he referred to Israel as a "cancerous tumor"
that had to be removed.[^12] An article in the Egyptian newspaper
*al-Akhbar* around the same time wrote of the "fraud of the Holocaust",
addressing Hitler by saying, "if only you had done it, brother" because
Jews are the "accursed ones", the "virus of the generation".[^13] In a
sermon broadcast on Saudi TV1 in 2002, a Saudi mullah drew the logical
conclusion in this prayer: "Oh God, destroy the usurper, tyrant Jews . .
. O God, help the mujahidin score victory and elevate the world of
Islam".[^14] No clearer statement is possible of how the quest for group
status motivates extremist violence.

The ultimate statement of anti-Semitism is, of course, the blood libel,
the claim that Jews murder non-Jewish children for ritual purposes, to
use their blood in some ritual food. This libel, too, is not uncommon in
Arab discourse. The incumbent Defense Minister of Syria, Mustafa Tlass,
published a book called "the Matzoh of Zion" in the 1980s--republished
in two editions-- repeating this venerable slander.[^15] The main
Egyptian pro-government daily *al-Ahram* repeated the same charge three
years ago,[^16] and when it was criticized, the Palestianian Authority
daily *al-Hayat al-Jadida* defended it, insisting that the claim of
ritual murder referred to a "true event". The Saudi daily *al-Riyadh*
published a different version of the slander this spring, claiming that
"Jewish people must obtain human blood" to make pastries for the holiday
of Purim.[^17]

Let me be explicit about what I am trying to say here. I do **not**
believe that there is a necessary and inherent clash of civilizations
between the West, or the U.S., and the Muslim world. What I am
saying--or, more precisely, agreeing with Bernard Lewis and Malise
Ruthven about--is that there exists in the Muslim world, especially west
of the Indus, an extremist ideology that rejects the habits of mind that
make Western science and technology possible, thereby entrenching Arab
and Muslim technological backwardness while simultaneously blaming that
backwardness on the infidel West, which is also portrayed as the Satanic
destroyer of Muslim culture. The ideology suggests that improving the
status of the Muslim world requires attacking the West in one way or
another. That ideology also includes a vicious anti-Semitism that
literally demonizes Jews, sometimes substituting the term "zionists" but
using it as synonymous with Jews. This anti-Semitism explicitly calls
for the destruction of the state of Israel and either the expulsion or
the annihilation of its population. Furthermore, this ideology is
explicitly promoted by high-ranking Arab and Iranian officials as well
as by the propaganda apparatus of many states in the region.

The implication of this analysis is that while certain Western or U.S.
policies might be considered relatively more provocative to Muslim
sensibilities than other policies, no policy that protects western
interests, western culture, or the existence of the state of Israel will
be satisfactory to extremist Islamist ideologues, including some in
prominent Saudi institutions. So while it might be true that certain
U.S. policies helped to provoke the violent reaction that led to the
mass murder of 9/11, it is also true that Middle Eastern Muslims are
particularly easy to provoke. It is worth keeping in mind that the
policy said to have most strongly motivated Osama bin Laden was the U.S.
deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia--who are there to protect Saudi
Arabia against a regime, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that bin Laden despises
very nearly as much as he despises the U.S. In what sense did that
"provoke" a campaign of terror?

I believe that the best frame of reference for understanding the
politics generated by such beliefs--and what needs to be done in
response--is neither the old-style *realpolitik* pursued by the current
Bush Administration nor the liberal reliance on international
institutions promoted by many in Europe. Rather, we need to focus on the
conflict of cultural beliefs and on the way politicians use myths and
symbols to gain support for themselves and their policies.

How and why the symbols are used is abundantly clear, and is often noted
by journalists. When leaders cannot or will not serve the material
interests of their populations by providing economic growth and improved
standards of living, they try to garner support by manipulating symbols
as a way of appealing to popular emotions. The easiest way to do this is
to blame foreign or domestic scapegoats--the West and Israel--for the
country's problems. It was, therefore, in the interests of the rulers of
all Arab countries to allow these anti-Western, anti-Israeli and
anti-Semitic ideologies to be expounded even as many of them followed
foreign policies of accommodation with the west and with Israel.
Something like this has been the ruling strategy of the al-Saud family
for decades: in exchange for political quiescence from the population,
the regime offered a small share of the country's oil wealth and
self-esteem through the rigid Wahhabi orthodoxy that cast all infidels
and most other Muslims as inferior.

This ruling strategy is, however, starting to unravel due to the
combined effects of the new Palestinian *intifadah*, the *al-Jazeera*
television network, and the American "war on terrorism". For the first
time, Arab governments are finding that anti-Zionism is not a pacifier
but an expander of popular unrest, as their populations see the violence
of the *intifadah* on television every day and are provoked to anger.
Therefore the very same Saudi regime that worked to block any
Palestinian-Israeli agreement in 2000 by denouncing any compromise on
Jerusalem abruptly reversed course and proposed a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace once it began to feel the political pressure
generated by coverage of the *intifadah.* At the same time, the 9/11
attacks ended American patience with the hypocrisy of so-called
"moderate" Arab regimes, demanding clear help and cooperation in the war
on the terrorists nourished for decades by these very regimes'
anti-Western propaganda. This presents a crisis for these regimes, as
their past ruling strategy has become unworkable.

**The Symbolic Politics of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict**

In understanding the symbolic politics of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, the starting point is the symbolism of the Holocaust. Arab
anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and explicit calls for the destruction of
Israel inevitably raise existential fears among the Israeli population;
in such a context, the Israeli concessions necessary for peace are
politically impossible. More to the point, these same violent themes are
common not just in Arab discourse generally, but in official Palestinian
discourse--and they were common even in the heyday of the Oslo process.
For example, at the time of the September 1996 mini-uprising over the
Israeli opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem, Arafat proclaimed of his
supporters: "They will fight for Allah, they will kill and be killed,
and this is a solemn oath". A year earlier, Arafat remarked on the
radio, "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is
liberated"--a direct statement of the aim of destroying Israel. His
justice minister said around the same time, "We must remember that the
main enemy of the Palestinian people, now and forever, is Israel".[^18]
Such statements, combined with the failure of the PLO ever to produce an
amended charter without calls for the destruction of Israel, make a
mockery of the Oslo renunciation of violence and acceptance of Israel's
existence.

If Palestinian symbolic politics involves demands for Israel's
destruction, Israeli symbolic politics contains a broad streak of
Biblically-based claims to sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and the
West Bank and, in its most extreme form, calls for the expulsion of the
Palestinians. It is this politics of religious symbolism that fueled the
continuing policy of settlements that make a mockery of implied Israeli
promises to exchange land for peace. In short, symbolic politics led
both sides to renege on their Oslo commitments. It is this bad faith on
both sides--the failure of both sides to confront their symbolically
powerful hard-line factions--more than any tactical error that led to
the collapse of the Oslo process.

**Toward a projection: The future of identity conflict**

A solidly-based projection about the future of identity conflict, in the
Middle East or elsewhere, would require enormously more data than is
currently available about the currency of hostile myths and symbols
among the populations in question. The considerations below are
therefore only rough guesses based on incomplete information**.** That
information suggests:

1.  In spite of the practical failure of political Islam in Iran, Sudan,
    and elsewhere, Islamist myths and symbols will remain a potent tool
    for mobilizing public support throughout the Muslim world for
    decades to come. This means that regardless of the medium-term
    degree of success in the U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda, extreme
    anti-American movements, including violent ones, will continue to
    crop up in the Muslim world.

2.  Against this backdrop, future regime transitions in Muslim countries
    (e.g., in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and post-occupation Iraq) will
    produce new governments that are skilled at manipulating Islamist
    rhetoric. While some might follow the Mahathir formula-occasional
    extremist rhetoric masking fundamentally moderate policies--it is
    likely that at least some of these states will experience
    new-generation Islamist revolutions in the coming decades.

3.  While the level of fear felt by different societies can vary over
    time, the U.S. and the Muslim world are currently locked in a
    security dilemma in which U.S. efforts to improve its security
    against terrorism threaten a range of Muslim values, from national
    sovereignty and autonomy to economic development and cultural
    values. The remonstrances of Muslim moderates--e.g., for trade
    concessions--are likely to remain ineffective, fueling the
    frustrations and fears that will motivate the next generation of
    Islamist terrorists. That will, in turn, likely continue to spark
    violent American reactions.

4.  Though the basic themes of Islamist discourse are similar from
    Morocco to Malaysia, Muslim unity would require a nearly
    unimaginable change in the institutional structure of politics
    across that region; the opportunity for any group of extremists to
    mobilize the whole Muslim world therefore will not arise. Indeed,
    even within particular nations, different strands of thinking
    (sectarian, ethnic and other) will continue to divide people,
    simultaneously keeping conflict going (including, most likely,
    between Palestinians and Israelis) and preventing massive
    escalation.

5.  The same theme of ethnic division rather than civilizational
    conflict will characterize identity conflict in other developing
    areas, especially sub-Saharan Africa. Emergence of new failed states
    will create useful vacuums into which terrorist organizations can
    move.

My main point, however, concerns intelligence collection. The above
projections are *guesses* based on fragmentary evidence. The U.S.
intelligence community has the resources to do better, but only if it
substantially increases the attention paid to the power of the political
myths that are the fundamental organizing weapon of Islamist and ethnic
extremists.

# 

[^1]: Ted Robert Gurr, "Ethnic Warfare on the Wane," *Foreign Affairs*
    vol. 29, no. 3 (May/June 2000), pp. 52-64. While Gurr's title claim
    may be correct, the waning of ethnic warfare is certain to be a
    slow, protracted process.

[^2]: Anthony D. Smith, *The Ethnic Origins of Nations* (Oxford: Basil
    Blackwell, 1986).

[^3]: Stuart J. Kaufman, *Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of
    Ethnic War* (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

[^4]: Donald Horowitz, *Ethnic Groups in Conflict* (Berkeley: Univ of
    California Press, 1985).

[^5]: See Gerard Prunier, *The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide*
    (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

[^6]: Samuel P. Huntington, *The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
    of World Order* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 254-58.

[^7]: U.S. Department of State, *Patterns of Global Terrorism*
    (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 1999).

[^8]: Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage". *The Atlantic* vol.
    266, no. 3 (September 1990), pp. 47-60; Malise Ruthven, *A Fury for
    God: The Islamist Attack on America.* (London: Granta, 2002).

[^9]: Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," p. 49.

[^10]: Cal Thomas, *Lexington Herald-Leader*, September 18, 2002; cf.
    Dore Gold, *Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New
    Global Terrorism* (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003).

[^11]: Quoted in Ruthven, *A Fury for God*, p. 177.

[^12]: "Khamenei's Response to Israeli-Palestinian Fighting". Middle
    East Media Research Institute Special Dispatch no. 365, April 10,
    accessed at .

[^13]: "Columnist for Egyptian Government Daily to Hitler:\'If Only You
    Had Done It, Brother\'". Middle East Media Research Institute
    Special Dispatch no. 375, May 3.

[^14]: Thomas, *Lexington Herald-Leader,* September 18, 2002.

[^15]: "The Damascus Blood Libel (1840) as Told by Syria\'s Minister of
    Defense, Mustafa Tlass". Middle East Media Research Institute
    Inquiry and Analysis Series no. 99, June 27.

[^16]: "Leading Egyptian Newspaper raises Blood Libel". Middle East
    Media Research Institute Special Dispatch no. 150, November 6,
    accessed at www.memri.org.

[^17]: "Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers\' Blood for \'Purim\'
    Pastries". Middle East Media Research Institute Special Dispatch no.
    354, March 15, accessed at .

[^18]: Jonathan Torop, "Arafat and the uses of terror". *Commentary*
    vol. 103, no. 5 (May 1997), pp. 30-33.