More evidence against the "Islamic people hate us" theory

This past weekend I visited the city of Osh for work.  Osh is in the south of Kyrgyzstan and is a city that has been settled in one form or another for about 3000 years, or for approximately 1000 years before Christ made an appearance on planet Earth.  It borders Uzbekistan and has a large Uzbek population, in a nation of Kyrgyz.  It is more traditional and less secular than Bishkek of the north, with an even stronger emphasis on Islam.

When I was picked up at the airport, the driver from the hotel wanted to know where I was from and, as he was driving, proudly pointed out all the sights and landmarks of the city to share with his American passenger.  The people at the Aga Khan Academy (a secular institution funded by the leader of the Ismaili branch of Islam), where I was proctoring a UCA examination, were very gracious and kind.  The students were very excited to meet someone from America and welcomed me to their school with great enthusiasm.

In the first afternoon of my stay, my work colleague and I ate at a local restaurant.  All the wait staff wanted to know where I was from and were pleased to learn that an American was eating in their restaurant.  You see, Osh is somewhat isolated and I don't think many Americans come wandering by.   But what most amazed me was what the manager of the restaurant did for us.  As we were about to leave the restaurant, we asked the staff of the restaurant to call us a taxi.  When the manager heard this, she wondered where we were going.  We told her we were headed for Sulaiman-Too, the sacred mountain of Osh.  She told us to come with her, as she would take us on the three-kilometer trip to the entrance of Sulaiman-Too in her car.

The restaurant manager driving us to Sulaiman-Too

On our drive, with my work colleague acting as translator, she told me how it was an honor to have me eat in her restaurant and how much she was pleased that I wanted to learn about the cultural heritage of Osh.  As she dropped us off at the entrance, she told us she wished she could guide us on our tour, but, unfortunately she had to return to work.

I never did learn the name of the restaurant manger, my Russian being non-existent and her English rather limited. But after we were dropped off and said our farewells, I thought of people in the United States and considered the fiery, heated, anti-Islamic rhetoric being shouted loudly in my home country, especially the Trumpian theory of how hateful Islam is. My experience, however, has been exactly the opposite of what a Trumpian would predict I would encounter deep in the heart of Islam.  Perhaps the kindness and hospitality I have experienced comes from the fact that Kyrgyzstan has not had American armed forces interfering in its internal affairs and, therefore, the population hasn't formed the opinions one might form when your people have had the opportunity to face the wrong end of a barrel of a gun or had the privilege of experiencing drone strikes or "shock and awe" treatment.  I think the extraordinary hospitality I have experienced in all three countries of Central Asia proves a very essential point: it is not Islam that causes people to hate and become extremists, as I have not encountered any sort of anti-American sentiment in these Islamic countries.  Could the explanation of this phenomenon possibly be that when your military becomes entangled in the lives of other nations and large numbers of people end up dying, combatants and innocents alike, then that is when hatred and extremism are produced?


(A postscript: Please accept my recommendation of the book, Overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer.  It is a wonderful history of U.S. military interventions around the globe and might provide a better explanation of why people in other nations sometimes don't exhibit a fondness for the U.S. than the ones offered up by Donald Trump. It's a very readable, meticulously researched, and fascinating study.)