I think that a lot of people are missing the point and confusing nationality and religion. A lot of what people portray as typical muslim behaviour is actually typical Arab behaviour, or whatever nationality is being talked about. The distinction is crucial because the largest muslim country in the world is Indonesia, and their form of Islam is quite different to the form of Islam practiced in the ME. By failing to make that distinction and branding them all the same, they are quite right to claim that we do not understand the situation and this has the effect of building walls when we should be building bridges. The other area that creates problems is when people focus on what differences they have, when we should be focusing on what we have in common. If we put our thinking caps on it should be obvious that we must have more in common with our fellow man irrespective of where they come from, than we have differences. Many years ago after spending some years in an Asian country I was asked to speak to a group about my experiences. Someone asked me how I handled the cultural gap. That question stumped me, I really had to think hard, in the end all I could say is that I hadn't noticed any. I guess some of them went home that night saying "I think he's been over there too long". Little did they know that I went home thinking "I can't wait to get back over there again"
