Anger at war on terror

The public antipathy of American policies of ruthless aggression and crude pressure against Muslims, in evidence since 9/11, has tended to grow with time in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world as there has been no let-up in their intensity. Although this attitude was reflected even in the treatment of Muslims entering the US or its own Muslim population, the foreign lands it has invaded have been the greatest sufferers and are seething with the hatred of it. In Pakistan, which is one of the countries directly affected by the war on terror, that feeling has been no less acute. Not only because of what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan but also indirectly because of the government's military action against the tribesmen taken under American pressure.

Since other Western powers went along with the US and more or less copied its behaviour, they also came in for criticism. Their participation with troops in the war on terror, while generally branding or suspecting all Muslims as terrorists, and acts like the publication of blasphemous cartoons showed the hatred they felt of Muslims as well as their faith.

Except for the relatively small group of people who seem to be genetically predisposed to all that represents America or the West, hardly anyone could be found in Pakistan and other Muslim countries endorsing the blind pursuit of vengeance that shows itself so manifestly in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, which inevitably resulted from the indiscriminate bombing of towns and villages in Iraq.