I was recently watching a Discovery Channel special on the Arab World. A theme illuminated time and time again is how humiliated the Arab world feels--how marginalized they believe they have become. I find this disturbing. One young UAE man said that the U.S. behaves as though western lives are more important than Middle Eastern lives and that the U.S. treats Middle Easterners like "sheep for the slaughter." While I personally believe this is about as accurate as "Muslims are terrorists," I digress....

I found it disturbing for two reasons:

1. Humiliation is not something that outside forces can fix. The U.S. could behave in any way at all and a humiliated person would find a hidden subversive motive. Feeling humiliated is something that can only be changed from the inside out.

2. There is a strong fatalistic component to Islam as it is practiced in much of the Middle East. This is a fundamental psychological barrier to self-directed personal change: A fatalist does not look to themselves to alter their situation, and finds outside events beyond their control--their ability to affect the world around them is limited. If change happens, it happens through the work of an outside force.

These two things combined, I think, will make any perception adjustment generations in coming, if at all.