President Bush urged the Muslim world on Tuesday to put aside suspicion and hatred toward the West and embrace democracy, saying that does not mean Arab nations have to accept American pop culture. A day after an interim government took political control in Iraq, Bush said "freedom is the future of the Middle East." Mideast leaders, including "some friends of the United States, must recognize the direction of events," he said. Bush spoke outdoors at Galatasaray University under a bright sun on the shore of the Bosporus. Acknowledging a clash of cultures, Bush said, "Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture and want no part of it. And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind." He added: "There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency." Similarly, Bush said democratic values do not require people to abandon their faith. "No democracy can allow religious people to impose their own view of perfection on others, because this invites cruelty and arrogance that are foreign to every faith," the president said.
Bush decried prejudice and fears in America as well as the Middle East. "When some in my country speak in an ill-informed and insulting manner about the Muslim faith, their words are heard abroad and do great harm to our cause in the Middle East," Bush said. "When some in the Muslim world incite hatred and murder with conspiracy theories and propaganda, their words are also heard by a generation of young Muslims who need truth and hope, not lies and anger," he said. Bush said democratic countries can have their own traditions and cultures and do not have to agree with each other. "Free governments have a reputation for independence, which Turkey has certainly earned," Bush said. "That is the way democracy works." |