The novel's central character Haj Ibrahim confides to a Jewish friend:

During the summer heat my people become frazzled.... They are pent up. They must explode. Nothing directs their frustration like Islam. Hatred is holy in this part of the world. It is also eternal.... You [Jews] do not know how to deal with us. For years, decades, we may seem to be at peace with you, but always in the back of our minds we keep up the hope of vengeance. No dispute is ever really settled in our world. The Jews give us a special reason to continue warring.

Uris has the cultured Dr. Mudhil elaborate:

We [Arabs] do not have leave to love one another and we have long ago lost the ability. It was so written twelve hundred years earlier. Hate is our overpowering legacy and we have regenerated ourselves by hatred from decade to decade, generation to generation, century to century. The return of the Jews has unleashed that hatred, exploding it wildly ... In ten, twenty, thirty years the world of Islam will begin to consume itself in madness. We cannot live with ourselves ... we never have. We are incapable of change.

Later in the novel (as if he were commenting on what Genesis 16:12 says of the descendents of Ishmael) Mudhil remarks:

"Islam is unable to live at peace with anyone.... One day our oil will be gone, along with our ability to blackmail. We have contributed nothing to human betterment in centuries, unless you consider the assassin and the terrorist as human gifts."

Some pundits may call Uris a "racist." They lack the novelist's sensitive but clear-headed understanding of Arab culture. Unlike apologists, Uris appreciates the tragedy of a few insightful Arabs who know they are trapped in the decadence of a savage culture which Bat Yo'er calls "A Culture of Hate." Hate incites murder. Consider: In all the lands it conquered, Islam replaced indigenous places of worship -- Christian, Jewish, Persian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu--with Mosques. This could not be done without enormous bloodshed. The notion of Islam as a religion of peace has no validity. Read more...

In historical perspective, the wish of Islamists for global rule is reminiscent of the communist ideology to establish a "world nation of proletariat" (the communist slogan was "Workers of the world unite!"). It is significant that at the peak of the power of the USSR empire, the Arab countries were strong natural allies of the USSR against the West.

Like any ideology that wishes to establish a totalitarian global rule, Islamic Arab-fundamentalism presents a serious threat to the community of nations, including the non-Arab Muslim nations, such as Turkish republics.
While the role of Christianity as a force in shaping International affairs has decreased, the role of Islamic Empire in shaping International affairs has greatly increased as a result of several factors:

1. Expansion of the Islamic Empire
2. Strong Arab electorates in European capitals formed by Arabs who emigrated mostly from North Africa (over 6 million Arabs in France alone)
3. The need to appease Arabs because of their financial power and control of global petrol prices
4. Combination of age-old anti-Semitism (remember European collaboration with Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews!) with Arab interests in the Middle against Israel

As Prof. Eidelberg reminds us in his piece at TheRaphi.com, "The Sages teach: "There is a time to kill, in the time of war, and a time to heal, in the time of peace.... There is a time to love, in the time of peace, and a time to hate, in the time of war" (Kohelet Rabbah 3:1). Consider the verse, "When you go forth to battle against your enemies" (Deut. 20:1). The Sages ask: "What is meant by 'against your enemies'"? They answer: "God said, 'Confront them as enemies. Just as they show you no mercy, so should you not show them any mercy'" (Tanchuma, Shoftim 15). Because the Jews of Israel do not hate their enemies, Israel is in retreat, and will continue to retreat."""""

If his prediction is accurate, that the Jews in Israel, with U.S. encouragement, continue to appease their Palestinian enemies, and the U.S. and the West continue to appease the Arabs and the Islamists, we all could eventually end-up retreating into non-existance as a free world, because most non-Muslims are incapable of hating "enemies" as much as proponents of Islam are of hating everything non-Islamic.

Does this mean that we all should abandon our faith and begin hating our enemy, or wait until it's too late and just abandon ourselves to allowing Islamists to burn down our churches and synagogues and require us to join mosques, or embark on an anti-Islamic campaign to destroy everything Islamic as they wish to do to everything non-Islamic?

The short and quick answer is absolutely not! But we do need to reverse an existing dangerous trend of Islamic appeasement and painting over the real issues, one of which is Islam itself. AND we must aggressively use diplomacy, the spread of democracy, and and when necessary, quick and overwhelming military response and pre-emptive strikes.

In Irshad Manji's book The Trouble With Islam, she writes of the need for a progressive reform to Islam, both in Arab-Muslim countries, and especially among Muslim practitioners in the West. Pervading anti-Semitism, hatred of the West and the United States, the ill-treatment and history of subjugation of Muslim women, a history of violence (which according to Ms. Manji surfaced around the 12th century,) and recent terrorism, are among the problems she takes issue with in her book. Fundamentalism is marring Islam, and she explains that it is the practitioner's responsibility to squelch chauvinism and bigotry, without having to feel compelled to abandon ones' religiosity in order to to fight fanaticism. Of course, this remains true for all faiths, Abrahamic in root or otherwise. And since Ms. Manji refuses to abandon her own faith, she is hoping to inspire other Muslims who are equally frustrated. "To this day, Muslims use the white man as a weapon of mass-distraction--a distraction from the fact that we've never needed the 'oppressive' West to oppress our own."

Perhaps we should borrow a page from her book and work diligently to encourage reform within Islam, and by also vociferously and aggressively standing up to Islamic attempts Islamacize Western society. Islam is in serious need of the equivalent of a protestant reformation and until there is widespread 'moderate' support for uncompromising and overt rejection of Islam's savage excesses, then 'Islamophobia' (literally 'a fear of Islam') is the only rational response to their religion by any who are not Muslims (or who wish to stop being a Muslim).

Until Arabs and Islamists magically stop hating and also Islam somehow spontaneously reforms, both of which are highly unlikely, unfortunately - our only other alternative is taking a military approach to dealing with the political manifestations of Islam, which will increasingly be the response required from the rest of the world, given that there is clearly no serious mainstream internal desire to see Islam change in ways to make it compatible with a broader pluralistic secular society. Islam has no one to blame for this response but themselves, though of course they will continue to blame everyone but themselves.

This, however, does not meant that given the opportunity for real progress through diplomacy and by encouraging the spread of democracy as President Bush has expressed the need for, we should leap to violence in a hot war of civilizations and religion, but we damned well better recognize that a war of civilization, culture and religion is exactly what we are currently involved in, and it is one of the West and non-Muslims against Islam. And so far, because we have been so slow to aggressively and properly respond to Islam's own aggressiveness, we are loosing the loosing side.

Related:
Terrorists: Defeatist policies encourage us