Islam Times - Tension still high between Muslims and the west

Islam Times - As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 “fiasco” approaches, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center has found that tensions and negative views remained high between Muslims around the world and Western countries, especially those who hold negative stereotypes about Muslims and Islam...

Islam Times: Muslim and Western publics continue to see relations between them as generally bad, says the survey released Thursday on the website of the Pew Research Center.

The survey titled, “Muslim-Western Tensions Persist,” was performed between March 21 and May 15 in a dozen countries, including Egypt, Turkey, the Palestinian occupied territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Coming in the course of Global Attitudes Project, the research is an update for a number of trend questions from a 2006 Pew Global Attitudes poll exploring how Muslim and Western countries view each other.

The report found that many Westerners view Muslims “as fanatical and violent” and few regard Muslims as “tolerant or respectful of women.”

On the other hand, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as “selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.”

The idea that relations are bad has become very frequent over the past five years in Western countries such as the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia.

Yet, such view was not shared by Muslims who complain from deteriorating relations with the west. “A greater percentage of Western publics now see relations between themselves and Muslims as generally good compared with 2006. In contrast, Muslims in predominantly Muslim nations are as inclined to say relations are generally bad as they were five years ago,” a report says.

The western concerns about the so called “Islamic extremism” are faced by similar concerns from Muslims about western policies affecting Muslims and Muslim countries.

“For the most part, Muslims and Westerners finger point about the causes of problems in their relations, and about which side holds the high ground on key issues,” the survey says.

“Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere who say relations with the West are bad overwhelmingly blame the West. However, while Americans and Europeans tend to blame Muslims for bad relations, significant numbers believe Westerners are responsible.”

Many Muslims blame Western policies and their corrupt governments for a lack of prosperity in their countries.

Perhaps reflecting the Arab Spring, in several Muslim and Western nations, people are more likely than they were five years ago to say the lack of prosperity stems from a lack of democracy.
There is an agreement between Muslims and Westerners that Muslim countries should be more prosperous.

Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West - they blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity.

Across the Muslim publics surveyed, a median of 53% say US and Western policies are one of the top two reasons why Muslim nations are not wealthier.

Muslims are also particularly unhappy about how the media portrays Islam, labelling every incident as “Islamic Extremism” whereas when crimes are committed by members of other ‘religions’, we never hear of “Christian extremism” or “Jewish extremism”. Clearly, the media is falsely accusing Islam of teaching immoral actions to the so called “extremist Muslims”.

Truth be told, any person who commits atrocious crimes does not belong to a religion, because no religion preaches violence. PEACE is the universal message of all religions.
© Islam Times