Almost 10 years after 9/11, rift between Muslims and the West is as great as ever

The findings of the US-based Pew Center which regularly survey opinions around the world on a variety of subjects are widely regarded as accurate. Its report published this week on Western and Muslim views of each other is therefore cause for considerable concern. Almost 10 years after 9/11, it shows the rift between the two is as great as ever, indeed growing. There may be satisfaction that fewer Europeans and Americans have a negative view of Western-Muslim relations than five years ago and that majorities in the France, the UK, the US and Russia have favorable views of Muslims. Even so, there is little to celebrate. The majority of Europeans still see relations with the Muslim world as bad while the majority of Germans and Spanish have negative views of Muslims. Only in the US is there a majority that thinks relations are improving.

Otherwise the report is unremittingly grim. More Muslims than ever now say relations are bad, particularly Pakistanis. Only in Indonesia and Turkey has the number declined. Inevitably, of those who say relations are bad, the Europeans and Americans blame the Muslims and the Muslims the West.

Depressingly, the report shows that Muslims view Westerners as selfish, violent, greedy, immoral, arrogant and fanatical; that Americans and Europeans view Muslims as fanatical and violent (but also honest); that vast numbers of Westerners consider that Islam to be a violent religion (the majority of Spaniards apparently think so). Conversely, Turks think Christianity is the world’s most violent religion. Most other Muslims said it is Judaism, although a third of Indonesian respondents went against the trend and bizarrely accused Islam. Large numbers of Muslim also hold the West responsible for the relative lack of prosperity in the Muslim world. In Jordan and Lebanon, the report shows that local Muslims believe that Western policies are more to blame for this than government corruption or the lack of education or democracy, although many more Muslims worldwide now blame the latter than did so five years ago.

What this report indicates forcefully is that so much of the mutual hostility is purely emotive — based on fears as to what “the other” believes. In fact, underpinning these fears and a self-defensive desire to apportion blame elsewhere rather than look closer to home, is a brutal bedrock of mutual ignorance.

For example, the report says that almost three-quarters of Palestinians, Turks and Pakistanis see the Americans as hostile to Muslims. There is no reason to doubt the scale of that belief. The figures are almost certainly correct. Yet that view does not tie in the report’s finding that the majority of Americans (two percent more than in 2006) have a favorable view of Muslims and believe that relations with the Muslim world are improving.

Likewise, the report shows that much of the antagonism toward Muslims in the West is based on the widespread, though wholly unfounded, belief that Muslim immigrants do not want to integrate. However, that belief reduces considerably when college-educated respondents are interviewed. In short, the less educated the respondents, the more hostile their views.

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