"Muslims are the victims of Islamists," declared Tashbih Sayyed, editor of Pakistan Today, at a January 9 Center seminar entitled "The Roots of Muslim Anger." Extremists who seek to establish Islamic states gain "vitality, energy, and power" by first fostering anti-Western resentment and then exploiting it to advance their political objectives. Through speeches, books, and pamphlets that justify hatred and terror, they "brainwash" the large majority of literate but uneducated Muslims into believing that Judeo-Christian civilization is wholly responsible for their fall and their current hopelessness. The "authority of the pulpit" distorts and manipulates both Islamic history and theology, depicting all conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim states as religious wars in which infidels challenged Allah.

The United States is now the principal target of Muslim extremism, Sayyed argued, because of its power, its support for Israel, and—most importantly—its pluralism. The right of people to express themselves and to discuss issues "has never been a tradition in Muslim society," and it threatens the kind of society that Islamic extremists envision. Sayyed indicated that the spark necessary for changing the hostility to America might come from the American Muslim community, which has knowledge and experience of the benefits of pluralism. If Afghanistan or Iraq were to succeed in establishing a liberal democratic regime clearly independent of the United States, that might also prompt new reflection in the Muslim world. "Radical dogmatism has to be eliminated somehow," he concluded.