RAWALPINDI, Nov 26: Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Dr Maleeha Lodhi has observed that politics not religion was at the root of the growing divide between the Muslim World and the West.

Delivering a lecture on “Islam and the West: Confrontation or Cooperation” at the Army Auditorium here, she said the apparent tension between civilisations was not over religious or cultural differences, but a reflection of the unequal distribution of world power, wealth and influence as well as perceived historical and contemporary grievances. “There is no clash of values, but of politics and interests,” she argued.

She dwelt on the historical context of the current issues that lay at the heart of the present divide and the mutual misperceptions that characterize the gap in understanding between the West and the Muslim World.

Describing relations between the West and the Muslim World as being at a crossroads, she said this marked a defining moment in the world history. She stressed that this reflected, in part, the complex dynamics of the contemporary era.

In the past, she said, different religions, cultures and civilizations occupied or inhabited separate geographical space. Today, the phenomena of international migration, communications and information technology, have, in many ways, blurred the geographic and other fault lines where specific faiths and cultures encounter and interact with each other.

She said such close contact and interaction now took place in the street, the workplace, the living room, on television and the Internet. Increased migration has meant the presence of significant Muslim diasporas in the West, thus sharpening the encounters, Dr Lodhi added.

“This greater engagement can serve to enhance an understanding and accommodation. Or it can be a factor for friction and rejection.”

These developments, she explained, had coincided with the rise of significant asymmetries in power - economic and political - where some enjoy greater privileges and advantages compared with others.

Against this backdrop, Dr Lodhi said, negative images of each other continue to influence perceptions in both the Muslim World and the West. And these negative mutual perceptions have provided a basis for the growing gulf between the two.

Dr Lodhi said narrowing this gap was perhaps the greatest challenge of our times and averting a future confrontation required serious and sustained efforts by both sides to address very substantially the issues of perception as well as reality.

She underlined that it would be a grave error to minimise the challenge by viewing it only as a question of public relationing or simply better communication by both sides. A key area where divergent views must be harmonised is on the conceptualisation of the “root causes” of terrorism.

She said generally Western nations and Muslim countries meant different things when they talked of addressing the underlying factors responsible for terrorism.

The West, she said, generally took a behavioural approach, while Muslim nations had a structuralist view.