Western Images of Asia - Essay Example

The reason for this shared animosity (That has passed from generation to generation), is that throughout history, each religion and people have felt that their God is in fact the only God and that the other faith is filled with Heretics or Infidels. In modern times another reason for western peoples apprehension towards Islam is that they do not understand its people or customs, they may see a women wearing a veil and automatically think she is a grenade-toting terrorist. In the last 25 years there has been a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and many western people automatically link these groups to the mainstream Muslim population and state, this is probably the main reason people believe that Islam is a threat to the west.

This is far from the case that, "Political, rather than religious, considerations have been as much the driving force in Islamic states as elsewhere. The 1991 Gulf War patently demonstrated that religious considerations of the regions countries were superseded by their political calculations. The behaviour of Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the Arab countries throughout the war was clearly based on a pragmatic style of politics." ( Monshipouri, 2003, pg25) After the terrorists attacks on The U.S. in September 2002 further made the western public feel that the religion of Islam was a threat to the west.

These attacks, carried out by a small extreme group of fundamentalists has succeeded in raising the awareness of Islamic fundamentalism in the west and raising sense of threat from the extreme version of the faith. The attacks also displayed the differences between cultures and religions, as states, "Americans have tended to believe that their institutions and values-democracy, individual rights, the rule of law and prosperity based on economic freedom-represent universal aspirations that will ultimately be shared by people all