SOURCE: Makdisi, Ussama. “‘Anti-Americanism’ in the Arab World: An Interpretation of a Brief History.” Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (September 2002): 538-57.

In the following essay, Makdisi presents the historical and political reasons behind the rise of anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.

“I think that anger in the Arab street is real. It is produced by a number of different factors. But in the end, what matters is not whether they hate us or love us—for the most part, they hate us. They did before. But whether they are going to respect our power.” With these words addressed to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Martin Indyk, then executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and later one of the architects of the failed Middle East policy in the Clinton administration, dismissed the history of anti-Americanism...