PESHAWAR, August 13: A noted scholar of Palestinian origin has lamented that the Muslim world does not take the US government policies seriously despite the fact Washington has become its unwanted neighbour.

“There is no institute to study the US policies objectively and academically,” Dr Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi said here at a lecture organized by the University of Peshawar in collaboration with the Institute of Policy Studies on Wednesday.

“The association between religion and American society is often considered unimportant, but religion does matter in the US,” Dr Abu-Rabi, who teaches at Hartford Seminary, USA, observed during the lecture titled “US Policy Towards the Muslim World”.

He pointed out that there were 250 seminaries in America that taught Christianity and trained their leadership very carefully.

He said the emergence of United States as the sole super power drastically affected the Muslim and the European worlds.

He urged the Muslim states to take the US government policies seriously.

Dr Abu-Rabi believed that religion had a deep impact on the US policy towards the Muslim world. Politically, he said, the Muslim world had disintegrated which was why regimes in the Islamic countries embraced every big power to save themselves.

When the Christian community was in disarray, the situation went in favour of the Muslim world. But then Protestants, a persecuted minority, settled in America and 50 million followers of Baptist churches sent missionaries overseas to convert people to Christianity, he maintained.

“Colonialism is not a matter of the past. It still exists in different shapes across the globe. The Catholic Church is still sending missionaries to convert people of other religions to Christianity,” Dr Abu-Rabi said.

He said 50 million Afro-Americans were brought in from Africa for plantation work. Likewise, 10 million Chinese were brought in as America needed cheap labour in its rush for gold.

He said that 150 multina-tional companies, out of a total 200, were controlled by America.

He said a majority of the Americans considered US a potential threat to interna-tional peace. Quoting a recent survey by a US-based weekly magazine, he said, 84 per cent people voted for America as “the country which was a threat to world’s peace”, whereas only 8 per cent put Iraq in that role.

Replying to a question, he said that religion had an impact on the US policy towards Muslims but the Muslim world was politically not united, and that the regimes in the Muslim countries were ready to embrace America to protect their interests.

The lecture was attended by vice-chancellor of the university Dr Zulfiqar Hussain Gilani and a large number of students.