The Chasm Between Cultures

Just when the solidarity of humanity would make a difference for the world, differences are growing due to the intransigence on both sides of the chasm.
International Herald Tribune

Westerners and Muslims around the world have radically different views of world events, and each group tends to view the other as violent, intolerant, and lacking respect for women, according to a new international survey of more than 14,000 people in 13 nations.


In what the Pew Global Attitudes Project called one of the survey's most striking findings, majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Turkey - Muslims countries with fairly strong ties to the United States - said, for example, that they did not believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.


This was just one finding illustrating the chasm in beliefs between the two groups following another year of violence and tension centered around that divide. The past 12 months saw terrorist bombings in London, riots in France by unemployed youths, many of them Muslim, a global uproar over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and no letup to the war in Iraq.


This led majorities in the United States and in countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to describe relations as generally bad, Pew found.


Muslims worldwide, including the large Islamic communities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, broadly blamed the West, while Westerners tended to blame Muslims. Muslims in the Middle East and Asia depicted Westerners as immoral and selfish, while Westerners saw Muslims as fanatical. MORE