Gratitude Through Actions

Submitted by RPaine (Australia), Apr 2, 2006 at 12:08

"The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them..." and "They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture."

Having worked in many parts of the world, I have seen this sort of response many times. Interestingly, a couple of days ago, I was speaking with a (Lebanese) Sunni and he said something that revealed a great deal about the Muslims mindset. This may help us to better understand their consistent response to many good deeds that the West has given to them so freely: You save them from tyranny, you give them life saving aid (food, medicine, earthquake relief, etc.), you educate them and you find oil, commercialized it for them, turning many of their nations into the wealthiest in the world, but all you get in disdain and attempted humiliation in return. America along with other modern Western populations can't seem to comprehend how these Muslims who we have set out to help can possibly respond in this way. Well neither could I, but it is becoming clearer and clearer to me. This Sunni said that this is what Allah says to the Muslims:

You want, I WANT;
You want, I WANT;
If you do what I WANT, I will give you everything you NEED.

I would be interested in any comments on this as it seems to work on many different levels, both in a micro sense and a macro sense, including how the Muslim world has been behaving with relation to/for/agains the civilized world. Should we just stop expecting gratitude from Islam? And why don't we just tell them from the start (even right now!) that we don't care about their gratitude - what we care about are ACTIONS!

Sincerely,
RP

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