Western publics and leaders perceived Islam as the post-Cold War threat

Evidence

Growing Muslim anti-Westernism has been paralleled by expanding Western concern with the “Islamic threat” posed particularly by Muslim extremism. Islam is seen as a source of nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and, in Europe, unwanted migrants. These concerns are shared by both publics and leaders. Asked in November 1994 whether the “Islamic revival” was a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, for instance, 61 percent of a sample of 35,000 Americans interested in foreign policy said yes and only 28 percent no. A year earlier, when asked what country posed the greatest danger to the United States, a random sample of the public picked Iran, China, and Iraq as the top three. Similarly, asked in 1994 to identify “critical threats” to the United States, 72 percent of the public and 61 percent of foreign policy leaders said nuclear proliferation and 69 percent of the public and 33 percent of leaders international terrorism—two issues widely associated with Islam. In addition, 33 percent of the public and 39 percent of the leaders saw a threat in the possible expansion of Islamic fundamentalism. Europeans have similar attitudes. In the spring of 1991, for instance, 51 percent of the French public said the principal threat to France was from the South with only 8 percent saying it would come from the East. The four countries which the French public most feared were all Muslim: Iraq, 52 percent; Iran, 35 percent; Libya, 26 percent; and Algeria, 22 percent. Western political leaders, including the German chancellor and the French prime minister, expressed similar concerns, with the secretary general of NATO declaring in 1995 that Islamic fundamentalism was “at least as dangerous as communism” had been to the West, and a “very senior member” of the Clinton administration pointing to Islam as the global rival of the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 579

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how collective fears reshape group behavior and how threats get socially constructed; also echoes moral-panic dynamics from other reading. — connects to: The Cold War’s end positioned Islam as communism’s replacement global threat — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 240; Islam served neocons as a substitute Cold War enemy when the USSR collapsed — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 675; Islam replaced communism as the West’s designated global enemy threat (+1 more)