A panel at the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Forum in Doha tackled the subject of Muslim-Western relations in the context of the post-9/11 period. James Bell, director, International Survey Research at Pew Research Centre, shared key statistics from surveys focusing on America, Europe and Russia as representative of the West and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan and Indonesia as representing Muslim perspectives.

When Western and Muslim publics were asked how they would characterise relations between Western peoples and Muslims, the “answer was, on balance, relations are bad. In Muslim majority countries, the majority in every country surveyed, except Indonesia, felt this way, and in the Western countries, majorities in Europe felt relations were bad, in the US about half felt this way, and a little over a third in Russia.” The tendency among both groups of countries was to point the finger at the other for this fact. 

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