A Clash of Civilisations

8.30.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 12th May 2006

More dialouge between young British people and young Pakistani people

Today's dialogue was in Peshawar (but via Islamabad) - the topic was "Clash of Civilisations - Myth and Reality". I went in with an open mind and really though there was not a clash of civilisations but came out thinking there might be and there was far more of a clash than I thought!

Some of the delegates to the Pakistan-UK talks

My premise is that there is lots of misunderstanding but neither the 'Muslim World' or 'The West' actually exist as one set of peoples, sure there are problems on both sides but they can be countered, perhaps this was naive. We got hung on Sharia Law and the Pakistani participants wanted to introduce it in full including being allowed to stone people to death for adultery and homosexuality - neither or which we from the UK delegation could accept mainly, partly as we don't believe in killing people and certainly do not think homosexuality should be illegal!

We ended by agreeing to disagree but I certainly did not leave happy.