A first-meeting kiss between a young Arab man and a young Arab woman on a Bahrain TV show drew widespread criticism from the country's Muslim population, who regard such behavior as verging on depravity. 

A commercial attempt to introduce Western television to the Arab world, the show was quickly taken off the air.

To many Westerners, the Arab reaction seems shocking. But to many Arabs, customs of the West seem just as bizarre. For instance, the violent, sex-laden depiction of American culture portrayed and exported by Hollywood is downright offensive to them.

True, there are irreconcilable points of difference between different civilizations. Nevertheless, the rub of the matter perhaps lies not in the "conflict of civilizations," but rather in certain prejudices that exist among different civilizations.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the Bush administration's plan to promote Western democracy in the Arab Middle East has turned into a bitter lesson for US diplomats dealing with the Muslim world.

Facing an Arab backlash, the Bush administration has honed its so called "Greater Middle East Initiative," which is set to be unveiled in June at the annual summit of the Group of Eight industrial powers in Sea Island, Georgia.

According to a draft version leaked to the media in February, the initiative envisages a series of political, economic and social reforms in the enlarged region including the current 22 member states of the Arab League as well as some other countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and Israel.

The US architects say the initiative seeks to have other industrialized nations join the US in promoting economic development, political freedom, equality for women, and other democratic institutions in the Middle East.

The September 11 terrorist attacks have further enforced Washington's view that "autocracy nourishes terrorism," and given renewed importance to efforts to promote development and democratization in the Middle East to eliminate the threat of terrorism once and for all as the primary goal of its Middle East strategy.

On the face of it, the US initiative would appear to be positive, since it seems to signal a new American willingness to favor an approach including the tools of "soft power" to promote an agenda from which Arab countries might benefit a great deal.

But in practice, the plan is in trouble precisely because it has been born under an American star.

Criticism of the plan came swiftly from influential Arab countries, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria in the lead, fearing Washington attempts to impose its own cultural models on them heavy-handedly.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak charged the Bush administration with behaving "as if the region and its states do not exist, as if they have no sovereignty over their land, no ownership."

The Bush administration is seen as having ridden roughshod over Arab sensibilities about Iraq, the Palestine-Israel conflict, and the pursuit of war on terror that many Arabs think has broadened into a general hostility to Islam.

The US past record of backing friendly dictators sparks suspicion in the Arab world.

Even reformers in the region fear that a US imprimatur on any initiative would discredit it in the eyes of the Arab public and strengthen radical Islamic forces.

In recent weeks, after the plan was leaked before US officials had fully discussed it with Arab leaders, a bevy of US officials have toured the region to find a balance between high-minded rhetoric and actual progress.

The balancing act was on display last month as US Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Kuwaiti and Saudi officials to discuss the initiative. Powell told reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the push for greater freedom in the Middle East was "not a matter of satisfying the United States; it's a matter of satisfying the aspirations of the people in the Arab world."

Notwithstanding, observers believe the US initiative is a major consequence of the US-led Iraq War, since Washington hoped to turn Iraq into a test ground of its Mideast strategy, which aims to spread Western-style democracy in the Arab and Muslim world to foster US interests in the region, with no real regard for the long-term interests of the local people.

On one hand, the stake in building democracy in Iraq is too valuable for the rest of the Islamic world to be allowed to founder.

On the other, since this region relies heavily on western aid and trade, Arab countries find it hard to ignore pressure from the United States.

Realizing the importance of joint action to face the US initiative, Arab foreign ministers held a emergency meeting in Cairo earlier last month.

President Hosni Mubarak said at the conference that home-grown reforms must take society's cultural, religious and demographic characters into account to ward off "instability or the overtaking of the reform process by extremists who would steer it in a different direction."

Egypt has submitted a proposed resolution which would affirm a commitment to "processes of modernization and reform that are undertaken by Arab societies in response to the wishes and needs of their people." The initiative supports the efforts of non-governmental organizations "within the framework of legality" and links progress on the issue to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Islamic concepts of consultation (shura), consensus (ijima), and independent interpretive judgment (ijtihad), he argues, are totally compatible with democracy.

Jordan, following the example of Egypt, submitted a counter-initiative to the US plan, stressing that Arab countries pledge to continue down the road to reform.

"Reform must come from inside the region and the international community must back up the efforts that are being made in the region," Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher said last month, after separate talks with the European Union's Middle East envoy Marc Otte and French envoy Bernard Emie.

Moreover, there will be no successful Greater Middle East Initiative without decisive progress toward a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which overshadows the whole Middle Eastern political situation.

As a shock wave of the Iraq War, the Greater Middle East Initiative has also been slammed for ignoring US efforts to implement the international roadmap peace plan to solve the Israel-Palestinian issue.

US President George W. Bush had hoped for a "demonstration effect" out of the Iraq War which could help settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and while traveling to the Mideast region last June launched the "roadmap" peace plan at a trilateral summit with leaders of the two sides.

But only months later, the peace process stumbled into stalemate again, since the US wavered, as it has done repeatedly in the past three years, in the face of difficulties to persuade the two sides, especially Israel, to make hard decisions.

Arab countries have their unique value systems, local traditions and social history which demand respect.

Reform must be the Arabs' own initiative as democracy cannot be imposed like a Coca-Cola marketing plan. It must have grass-roots support to be accepted by Arab societies that have a culture which is ostensibly very different from that of the West.

In various Arab lands, intellectuals and brave reformers are watching, waiting, and working for the constructive changes they dream of.

In some cases, the changes have been marked and real.

Each nation has to find its own path and follow that path at its own speed.

(China Daily April 2, 2004)