Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia
Preamble
Few will dispute the fact that the defining tension today is between the West and the Muslim world* Sure, there are other tensions as well – Japan and China; Japan and the two Koreas; Russia and Ukraine; India and Pakistan; the United States and Cuba as well as Venezuela; and the many conflicts in Africa There are tensions within nations as well, in the West and elsewhere – here in the United Kingdom; Somalia; Sri Lanka; China; Russia; Myanmar; Thailand; and the Philippines. But none of these tensions are as profound or as far-reaching in their global consequences as the tension between the West and the Muslim world today. This is not the first time in history that the tension between Western countries and Muslim nations was the dominant tension* When Muslim Arabs extended their sway into Europe in the seventh and eighth century, during the Crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth century, and when the Ottomans occupied parts of Eastern Europe in the fourteenth to seventeenth century, they emerged as the defining tensions of their era.
