CAIRO: The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Georgetown University, launched a report last week entitled, "Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue. The report, which is the first of its kind, gives a systematic overview of how Muslim and Western societies perceive and relate to each other on the political, social, economic and cultural levels. Carried out by leading academics and experts in these respective fields, the report features a Gallup index ranking different countries based on how optimistic they are about relations between Islam and the West, with 100 being the most optimistic. There is a mixture of negative and positive findings contained within the report, though the average Gallup score was only 37, with Bangladesh the highest on 50, and Russia the lowest on 25. Egypt scored 39. The majorities in populations around the world believe that violent conflict between the West and the Muslim world can be avoided, but they also share a great deal of pessimism about the state of relations. Among both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority nations, the proportion who says they think the "other side is committed to better relations rarely rises above a minority of 30 percent. Notwithstanding the prevalent sense of skepticism, a majority of residents in nations around the world say that better interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them. Greater interaction with the Muslim world is actually seen as a threat by 60 percent of the citizens in many European countries, but not in America or Israel. The report s lead author and President of Georgetown University John J. DeGioia hopes the report will be used as a reference point to chart the progress of dialogue between Islam and the West. "As an annual global reference on the state of West and Islam dialogue, the report will elevate the visibility of dialogue activities around the world and strengthen efforts to advance greater understanding and cooperation at a critical juncture in history, he said. The full report can be found at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/C100/Islam_West.pdf
