The 'Islam vs. the West' dialogue ceased to be about real people a long time ago.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.
It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.
Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.
I believe we don't need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.
The truth is that just as the 'West' is not a homogenous entity with one view on foreign and domestic policy, nor are Muslims.
Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it's the very same argument of course advanced by Al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam.
After the 9/11 incidents, Islam has become a big question mark among westerners, especially Americans. The mass media constantly raise the issue of relationship between Islam and terrorism.
The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.
To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise.
The West is in for a long, irregular confrontation - not with terrorism, which is simply a tactic, but with radical Islam.