From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 6/24/2006 11:53 PM
International Herald Tribune
 
The 'clash of civilizations': Who's to blame?
 
International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2006
THE WAR ON TERROR

It is true that relations between Muslims around the world and the West have not been particularly warm in recent times. And the reason is simple: Sept. 11 pitched the West against the Muslim world. Al Qaeda became a synonym for Islam, and America's so-called war on terror effectively - and some will say conveniently - became a war on Islam. Muslims are generally labeled "fundamentalist" and "terrorist" and this provides them an excuse to persecute Muslims. I can tell you that if I travel to say, London, for instance, because my name is Saleh, they will take time and be thorough in clearing me through the immigrations because, as far as they are concerned, I could be concealing a bomb somewhere. That is how bad it is. They will search you more thoroughly because you are a Muslim, and you cannot help noticing that Islam is being made to seem like a burden on some of us.

- Saleh Bayeri, 43, politician and Muslim community leader in Jos, Plateau State, central Nigeria

The main cause of this poor relationship is because the West connects Islam to terrorism. But my feeling is that the relationship is beginning to change in Indonesia. This might be in part because the U.S. foreign policy toward Indonesia recently has been to look at Indonesia, being a large Muslim country, as a friend and strategic partner instead of an enemy and a threat.

- Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammidiyah, Indonesia's second- largest Muslim organization with 35 million members, Jakarta

BOTH MUSLIMS AND THE WEST

I think the Muslims need to be introspective and look at their community from within and put their house in order. We do have a serious issue in terms of the miseducation of youth about Islamic practices, what's acceptable and what is not. We have to look at the importation of foreign imams, which I believe is being tackled by the Muslim Council of Britain and other organizations, and we must look at general education and socioeconomic deprivation. As for Iraq, it's a ritual humiliation every day for me as a Muslim when I see Guantánamo Bay, when I see the desecration of the Koran and the three suicides, and when I read it described as "a coordinated attack and this is warfare." I'm saddened, and I think this shows a lack of humanity.

- Shahedah Vawda, 33, a health scientist who lectures at London's South Bank University and is involved with the City Circle, a group of young Muslim professionals

Muslims feel that the crimes perpetrated in Palestine and Iraq are the biggest crimes that are happening. What they don't realize is that if these crimes came to an end, Muslims would still have a serious problem of reform. Sixty percent of our population is still illiterate; women are totally marginalized in many of these societies. You've got a long, long way to reform.

- Ali Abbas, 31, a Pakistani economist from Lahore who is completing a doctorate at Oxford University and will shortly go to Washington to work for the International Monetary Fund

What I have learned since I was a kid was that there have always been wars between Muslims and Christians or Catholics. They are labeled as religious wars. But the truth is that these wars were fought, and are fought, for political and economic interests. The religion is not the problem, it's the people behind the religion.

- Imam Karyadi Aryant, 25, fashion designer, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

It's true that relations are bad, but to go from there to saying who's wrong? I think everyone bears some responsibility.

- Jeannine Pilé, 33, housewife and mother, Paris

NEITHER MUSLIMS NOR THE WEST

My perception is that when you get down and talk to people, there isn't a great clash of civilizations. Particularly from a women's point of view.

- Baroness Pola Uddin, 46, the first Muslim woman to be a member of Britain's House of Lords

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

It is a sort of reflection of Muslim dissatisfaction with Western foreign policies, especially on two issues: the Palestinian issue and now Iraq. These are the apparent issues, which people talk about day and night - which the news focuses on day and night. And they come to the eyes and ears of the audience, of the Muslims who have been surveyed, daily in the bloodiest way - killing, women screaming and yelling, and soldiers frowning. So this picture has now given this impression that it is Western foreign policies in the Middle East that they don't like. Because other Western things they do like. If you look at the queues of the people in front of embassies, applying for immigration, that's a sign. So what they hate is American foreign policy, and they see the Europeans as sort of succumbing to the Americans.

- Adnan Abu Odeh, 73, a former political adviser to King Hussein of Jordan, now a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

The situation in the Middle East has been less than comfortable for a very long time. The establishment of the state of Israel was the starting point.

- Professor Humayun Ansari, 58, director of the Center for Ethnic Minority Studies, Royal Holloway College, University of London

I blame the West because they are biased toward Israel. And the whole West is pressuring us by supporting Israel at our cost and with no right or legitimacy. What is right for Israel is wrong for us. They are slaughtering us in Palestine, and they are slaughtering the citizens. If we kill only one of them, they call us terrorists. But they are occupying our homes. If someone occupies your home, Mr. Bush, wouldn't you fight him and kill him?

- Hassan Omar Abdel Rahman, 70, a Palestinian-Jordanian who was formerly a pharmacist in Kuwait and is now unemployed in Amman

The main problem is in the Middle East, which is the problem of the Palestinians. The Western world is perceived to be supporting Israel against the oppressed Palestinian people. If that problem can be dealt with, where a Palestinian state is created where they can live and develop their society and give hope to their own people, the relations will definitely improve.

- Abdul Oroh, 46, deputy chairman of the Nigerian House of Representatives' Committee on Human Rights, Abuja

I place the responsibility historically primarily on the West because they are the stronger party - they occupied these lands.

- Nadia Abou Darwish, 50, housewife, Amman

THE MEDIA

I blame the people in the West, definitely. The media portray Islam as terrorism. When something blows up in Israel, all over the world, they show them saying, "Look what the Arabs did to us." This makes for a kind of exposure that shows Muslims as terrorists.

- Reem Sandarussi, 26, advertising account manager, Amman

Television channels like Al Jazeera, which have a strong Muslim identification and focus a lot on the conflicts like Iraq and Israel-Palestine, have an enormous influence on Muslim attitudes, and that polarizes opinions.

- Catherine de Wenden, immigration specialist at the Center for International Studies and Research, Paris

When you see your Muslim friends on a daily basis you don't think that relations with Muslims are bad. But if all you do is watch television, most of what you see are extreme examples of Islam. Islam is not the religion of terror. But people are afraid of terrorism and too often religion is mixed up in the debate.

- Pierre-Etienne Issoulie, 22, architect, Paris

EXTREMISTS

The blame lies neither with your average Muslim or your average Westerner, but with extremists. Look at the conflict in Israel and Palestine. In this conflict extremists are making decisions on both sides.

- Dalil Boubakeur, president of France's Muslim Council and head of the Paris Mosque

NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES

Being a Muslim and a Westerner are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The problem is: we need more middle-class Muslims in the West. Successful middle-class Muslims should be winning the respect of other Westerners, but instead their accomplishments compete in shaping public opinion against violence, honor killings and forced marriages, which is how Islam is often portrayed in Western countries. The negative, inaccurate stereotypes of Islam overwhelm the positive opinions other Westerners should be forming about their everyday Muslim neighbors, like the other parents at the kindergarten, the local banker, policeman or shopkeeper.

- Cem Ozdemir, 40, a member of the European Parliament for Germany's Greens party

What has fed this kind of thing is the propaganda worldwide which is projecting Muslims as intolerant, projecting 9/11 as a conspiracy against the West because Muslims are against the West. The whole relationship between communities is undergoing a transformation. Muslims are feeling part of a larger Muslim whole rather than a distinct Indianness. The relationship between communities in India is not under threat. But it is under pressure, because of these various developments.

- Wajahat Habibullah, 60, a retired senior bureaucrat and now India's chief information commissioner, New Delhi

WESTERN DENIAL

I think first we have to look at ourselves. It's as if people were ashamed of our roots. Some people in Spain want to forget that we were a Muslim country for nearly 800 years. But you cannot deny your roots, and we all have Islamic roots.

- Manuela Aparacio, 58, publishing executive, Madrid

DIFFERENT VALUES

It is very difficult to say who's to blame. Remember the dispute over the cartoons of Muhammad. It's about respect for each other's culture and values. Both have different norms and values.

- Stefanie Mates, 42, psychotherapist, Berlin

WESTERN INDIFFERENCE

The majority of Pakistanis feel that the causes of their bad relations with the West are: a) the West's support to Israel; b) Western nations' indifference to the Kashmiris' sufferings at the hands of Indian security forces.

- Fazal-ur-Rahman, 46, director of the East Asia Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad

The West did absolutely nothing to protect the Bosnians while Serbs massacred them in the heart of Europe. Bosnians were not considered as Europeans because they were Muslims.

- Mustafa Karaduman, 51, owner of Tekbir, a Turkish fashion brand for devout Muslim women, Istanbul

MUSLIM POVERTY

The same situation has arisen that existed within Western countries 100 years ago. That is, the elite has huge resources under its control and the working class has very low standards of consumption and almost no political rights. Then this led to rebellion and social, communist revolutions. It gave rise to a society of equal rights. Arab and other poor countries demand the same. The people demand this, not the emirs, who are more part of Western world. Not presidents. But these people demand a new world order like that in the West: normal protection of labor, real electoral freedoms, health care guarantees. All those things that poor European workers demanded 100 years ago are now demanded by poor Arab countries.

- Sergei Markov, 48, director, Institute of Political Studies, deputy chairman of the Public Chamber Commission on International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy, a Kremlin-organized "civil society" body, Moscow

LACK OF DIALOGUE

In the Arab and Islamic worlds and on the Western side, we have not done enough to try to approach each other to explain our position to one another. We have not tried to have a coherent dialogue. This is a mistake that we both share. One of the examples of the lack of proper dialogue was the recent question of caricature of the Prophet. The West looked at this issue from the perspective of freedom of expression and was not ready to listen to the view in relation to how this was insulting to us. Many people in the Islamic and Arab worlds also asked for dialogue, but some reacted in a violent way, which was counterproductive.

- Hesham Youssef, chief of staff at the secretary general's office of the Arab League, Cairo

It is caricatures, simplifications and misrepresentations of each other, among Muslims and Westerners, that are at the origin of misunderstanding and incomprehension between the two groups. The reality of living side by side in European cities is of course always much more complex. By improving equality for all, we can improve dialogue and tolerance.

- Azouz Begag, France's minister for equal opportunity

MUTUAL SUSPICION

I think the blame lies with the leaders of Western and Muslim countries who don't trust each other. I mean, Bush won't trust Iran with any nuclear substance, and ulterior motives are read into cartoons in a Danish newspaper, and British metro police are raiding the homes of Asians and Africans in East London to retrieve nonexistent chemical weapons - and Saudis flying aircraft loaded with explosives into American buildings. All these actions reinforce that mutual suspicion between these two groups.

- Lumumba Dah Adeh, 44, special assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria on legislative matters, Abuja

WESTERN ARROGANCE

The problem is that people in the West think they are gods - perfect, clever, intelligent, and everyone else who does not look like them is lazy, stupid and a liar. Western foreign policy is also to blame. We see them coming here occupying our countries, taking the oil. Muslim countries are rich in natural resources, enjoy the best weather. That is why Western governments want to control us and take over our wealth. Look what they did in Iraq, Afghanistan and what they are doing now in Sudan.

- Abeer Ali Muhammad, 38, fitness trainer, Giza, Egypt

HISTORY
There are historic subtexts. If one speaks of conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union, I think these are echoes of Stalin's policies. It's hard to speak of the whole world, of U.S. policies. Here, I think Chechnya is the result of Stalin's horrible deportation of people.

- Karina Cherniak, 57, Orthodox Church youth worker, Moscow

Interviews conducted for the IHT by John Morrison in Britain, Abeer Allam in Egypt, Katrin Bennhold and Avis Bohlen in France, Judy Dempsey in Germany, Anand Giridharadas in India, Peter Gelling in Indonesia, Mona El-Naggar in Jordan, Senan Murray in Nigeria, Salman Masood in Pakistan, Sophia Kishkovsky in Russia, Renwick McLean in Spain, and Sebnem Arsu in Turkey.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/22/news/voices.php