Residents in all but two of the countries surveyed for
Gallup’s Poll of the Islamic World feel that Western nations
do not have much interest in improving the coexistence between the
West and the Arab/Islamic world. Only in Turkey do respondents
credit the West with an interest in improving relations with the
Islamic world. Views on this score are mixed in Iran; elsewhere,
majorities or strong pluralities believe that the West displays
little concern for improving this relationship.
These views are consistent with other responses showing the
degree to which respondents believe that Western nations do not
have much respect for Arab/Islamic values and do not exhibit
fairness toward Arab/Islamic countries.
One issue in the relationship between the Islamic and Western
societies is the perceived impact of the Western value system on
local value systems within predominantly Islamic societies.
The results show that in all of the countries surveyed,
respondents view Western values as having a negative effect on
local values. In four of the countries -- Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, and Lebanon -- the single most common response to the
question on the "impact of Western culture" was the choice on the
scale that indicated that the net effect of the West’s value
system has been "very negative" on their societies’ value
systems.
What specific Western influences are identified at the
popular level as having negatively affected local value systems?
The answer is clear: Western morals and decadent culture. Asked to
volunteer their own examples of negative Western influences, the
most frequently mentioned items are various cultural and lifestyle
factors, rather than political or economic dimensions.
The cultural and lifestyle factors negatively associated with
the West by citizens of these predominantly Islamic countries
include perceptions of vulgar or immoral activities, such as
libertine attitudes toward sex, alcohol consumption, vulgarity and
nudity in films and music, and inappropriate dress and/or
hairstyles. Majorities of respondents in Jordan, Kuwait, Indonesia,
Lebanon, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia give examples that fall into
this broad category, as do many respondents in Pakistan, Turkey,
and Iran.
The second most frequently given examples of the problems with
Western culture relate to perceptions that citizens of the West
have a growing indifference to religion or a weakening degree of
adherence to religious precepts -- though this category of response
is far less widely cited. About one in five Pakistanis and one in
nine Saudis, Moroccans, and Jordanians give responses that allude
to a perceived fading of religious belief locally.
Other, less widely mentioned negative effects of Western values
include insufficient courtesy and deference to elders and an
increasing level of crime and violence in these societies.
Given these responses, it is not surprising to find that large
majorities in Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco, plus modest majorities
in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, all regard "economic, social,
and cultural modernity" as experienced in the Western societies to
be predominantly or totally in conflict with local traditional
value systems. The results for Turkey are particularly noteworthy,
given that society’s relatively early and comprehensive
integration into numerous Western political and economic
institutions.
Kuwait, Pakistan, and Indonesia are exceptions to the overall
pattern. Even here, however, sizable pluralities of the adult
population share the opinion that these modern aspects conflict
with traditional local value systems.
