"After the September 11th terrorist attacks, after the year 2001, the year of the worldwide spreading of the neoconservative theories about the shock of civilisation, the year that promoted the terms Islam and West as absolute landmarks to understand the contemporary world, Islam has become the Great Other of the West, its antithesis". This was stated by Nathalie Galesne at the International Talks that are taking place in Luxembourg. "This perfunctory view of the world is not too fussy, especially when it is orchestrated by the media on a planetary scale. 4 reductions are basically made. The first one consists in assimilating all Arabs to the Muslim religion, ruling out any other religion and the possibility that an Arab citizen may have any identity outside religion. The second one consists in reducing Islam to Islamism, to the quintessentially-political tendency of Islam. The third one consists in reducing Islamism to its most violent expression, i.e. terrorism. Finally, the fourth one consists in assimilating all Arab citizens to their own governments, portraying them as unable to have access to democracy and to be the real protagonists of their own political fate".
