The majority of people in Muslim and western countries believe that the Islam-West division is worsening while each side thinks the other disrespects their culture, says a report on Muslim-Western relations released on January 21, 2008 in Davos, Switzerland.
The report, "Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue," conducted by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Georgetown University, looks at how Muslim and Western societies perceive and relate to each other at the political, social, economic and cultural levels.
The report features a Gallup poll on Muslim-West Dialogue which finds that majorities in all the populations surveyed in 21 countries believe that systemic violent conflict between the west and the Muslim world can ultimately be avoided. However, the degree of optimism about future relations between the west and Islam fluctuates widely.
The people of Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands are among the most optimistic in the world about the state of relations between western and Muslim societies, while those in Pakistan, Brazil and Russia are among the most pessimistic.
The report found that Europeans, worried by immigration and a perceived Islamic threat to their culture, are alarmed at the prospect of greater interaction with the Muslim world. By contrast, a majority of people in the United States and the Muslim world felt more interaction would help. “European populations surveyed are much more likely to believe that greater interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is a threat than a benefit,” the report said.
Most Muslims (ranging from 62-84%) feel that the West does not respect them. Western citizens tend to agree, with fewer than half agreeing that the West respects the Muslim world.
One area of disagreement, however, is the reverse -- Muslim attitudes towards the West. Muslims tend to agree that they respect the West, but those in Western countries, including 82% of Americans, disagree.
The writers of the report suggest that the discrepancy between the way Muslims think the Muslim world regards the West, and the perspective of Westerners, may have to do with a Western tendency to conflate negative opinion of the US, common in the Muslim world, with a rejection of the West and its values as a whole.
Three in four US residents say the Muslim world is not committed to improving relations with the West. At least half of the respondents in Italy (58%), Denmark (52%) and Spain (50%) agree that the Muslim world is not committed to improving relations.
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