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What could possibly motivate 18 terrorists to bomb three buildings and kill thousands? A panel discussion of the origins of the United States' war on terrorism held last night offered analysis into that and other such presumably unanswerable questions.
"We must explain the factors that make it possible for Osama bin Laden to exist," said Professor of religion at Dartmouth, Kevin Reinhart, who is an expert on Islam.
Reinhart explained that as the spokesman for a group of people who share grievances against the West, and America in particular, "Osama bin Laden is kind of a hip-hop Muslim ... His Islam is like Jim Jones' Christianity -- self serving."
The Islamic fundamentalist aversion to the United States' foreign policy is not a new issue, the panelists stressed.
"The Iranian Revolution of 1979 encouraged Islamic movements throughout the Middle East," said Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth, Misagh Parsa, a scholar of the politics of developing countries and the Iranian Revolution.
Such movements have been inspired by internal factors in the region, such as economic inequalities, as well as by external ones, such as what Parsa called the "tragic history of the Middle East with American intervention."
But while the panelists agreed that definite discontent did exist in the Muslim world, they also pointed out that people who practice Islam do not all share the same angry ideology.
"There is no single Islam," said Gene Garthwaite, a panelist and Dartmouth history professor.
