DAVOS, Switzerland The world does not necessarily need an alternative to the World Economic Forum such as the World Social Forum gathering of nongovernmental organizations and antiglobalizers at Porto Alegre, Brazil. But it could use some alternative perspectives on the world to the Western ones mostly on offer here. Despite much talk of the West needing to understand Islam and to develop interfaith dialogues, it appears bogged down in the assumption that the extremist versions of religion that Islam has spawned are representative. Typical was a "Guide to the Issues," produced by the forum itself. Delegates were told "Most of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims live in societies governed by public institutions that are firmly based on religious norms." The reality is that the countries with the six largest Muslim populations are: Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey and China. Of these only Pakistan fits the World Economic Forum description. It was no wonder that a minister from the country at the top of that list, a non-Muslim of Chinese descent, found it extraordinary that no one from her country with its democratic and secular polity had been asked to speak on the subject of either democracy or Islam. Ditto for democratic Bangladesh or plural Malaysia. Nor were any Indian Muslims there to explain the relationship between Islam and the state in a country where Muslims are a large minority. If the West was concerned with modernizing - not demonizing - Islamic nations it would focus on these countries as examples. Instead, they are ignored. Islamic fundamentalism is surely a problem in many countries, especially when it turns violent as it often does in the Arab world and occasionally in Southeast Asia. But viewed through a non-Western prism, at least as great a danger to the world may be the impact of Christian fundamentalism on U.S. foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but in its attitude to non-Christian countries such as China. Given the potential for good and ill of U.S. power, such fundamentalism is seen as a threat abroad as surely as it is to many scientists and secularists in the United States. In South Asia, Hindu fundamentalism is at least as a much a concern as its Islamic counterpart having the potential to destroy the secular, plural polity so vital to India itself and to the stability of the whole region. From a Davos viewpoint, apart from Islam, the Israel-Palestine dispute and Iran were seen as the major threats to global stability. But look at these issues from the point of view of someone living in the East or even South Asia. First, Israel and Palestine. It would certainly be desirable for the issue to be resolved both for the benefit of the parties directly concerned and for those in the Middle East and in the West whose other inter-state relationships suffer collateral damage from real or imagined bias toward one side or the other. Settlement may take the heat out of some Muslim antipathies toward the West. But is lack of a settlement really such a threat to global security as perceived by people in China, Japan or Thailand? And can it really be imagined that settlement would bring an era of peace and prosperity throughout a region with a plethora of ethnic and religious divides, huge population growth, vast income imbalances and shortages of water? Iran, as seen from Davos, is a large and credible threat to global peace on account of its apparent quest for nuclear capability. But many in Asia, Muslim and non-Muslim, Chinese, Korean and Indian, see Iran as a nation being threatened by others on account of a right to nuclear independence. In the past 100 years Iran has never attacked anyone but it has been invaded by Iraq and subjected to British and Russian tutelage. Now it finds itself close to five nuclear states - Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel and the United States. Is it Iran that is a threat to world peace or those who may use force to attempt to deprive it of strategic capabilities equivalent to those of its neighbors. From this perspective the question is: Will there ever be an end to the West's race and religion-fueled aggression against the East? It is not necessary to agree with such sentiments to recognize they are widely held in the part of the world where business prospects for Western firms are brightest. See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune. < < Back to Start of Article