(identity 'myron)

Sun, 09 Jan 2005

How Arabs view terrorism? [/World]

I found this survey and the conclusions made about it pretty illuminating.

Looking at Lebanese national sample data by religion, 56% of Muslims and 88% of Christian respondents defined al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization. Interestingly, however, both groups defined Islamic Jihad, Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Hizbullah as legitimate resistance organizations (see table 1 below). This is clear evidence that the problem of differences of perception between Western countries and Middle East one is not religious or cultural, but rather political. If it were cultural and rooted in religion we would have found the definitions given by Muslims to all of these organizations to stand in stark contrast to labels assigned by Christians. But 74% of Lebanese Christians labelled Hizbullah a legitimate resistance organization, making the point even clearer that the key to dialogue and conflict resolution in Arab-West relations is politics, not religion.

Picked this up via another blog, Politics, language and cultures of the Arab world.

// posted at 13:02. permalink   comments