of the ever growing depreciation towards non-Western cultures (the Muslims being at the fore front, but we should not forget other parts of the world, like the fight of nativeLatin American Indians).
As a consequence, the essentialist vision of the Others ' culture, and especially the Muslim's, will gain even more influence. The framework of Islam is thought of as rigid, anchoring society in the past, tending to regression, as if Islam alone determined the fututre of these peoples. Islam is then often interpreted as the general source of History but also of the future of Arabs and Muslims, and it is seen as determinist and omnipresent. Such analysis think of Muslim societies as complete, close up entities, as if they were not in constant evolution, transforming their identities, their visions, their culture and institutions, according to new circumstances and situations. These theories easily turn in an "islamic exception "situations that in fact exist in many other parts of the world, and that can be explained by a variety of political, economic and social factors. It was not very difficult in such circumstances to convince public opinion in the West that what happens in the Muslim world is always related to an irrational wave of cultural and religious anti-western fanaticism, while in reality governments themselves, strongly supported by the West, are greatly responsible for the present situation mainly because of their resistance to democratization.
One should not forget that the Gulf War was the first instance staging this new order. It not only meant U. S. supremacy in the world, it was also used to give more weight to Western domination over others, and more specifically over Arab and Muslims. What was in theory a fight against a specific tyran in a specific Arab country (even if it aimed at protecting other tyrans from the area), turned also into a cultural world crusade against Islam. p> This transformation was very useful in order to mobilize just about everybody in the West, and define with general approbation the general orientation of Western policy in the area. That is to say: to protect Israeli interests as well as the energy sources in the Gulf, to support allied Arab dictatorships that depend dramatically from the West, to build a new global concept based on the existence of "legitimate" and "rogue" states, whereby one can identify supposed and uncertain threats in order to justify enormous military expenses in the region (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Koweit alone spent 44,2 billion dollars beween 1990 and 1994, for the great benefit of Western armement indutries).
The promotion of democracy and human rights were left behind (Read Amnisty International and Human Rights Watch reports), while the West put together an ad hoc litterrature in order to avoid having to make a real political analysis and to find a justification for its policies in the region, focusing on the so-ca...
