They measure themselves by our standards

Deep inside themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction — their violent outbursts are proof. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be, if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper? Fundamentalist Islamicist terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true “racist” conviction of one’s own superiority.

Slavoj Zizek, In defense of lost causes.