Conflicts between civilizations have existed since civilizations themselves evolved, due to differences in culture, religion and politics. While the clash between the predominantly Christian West and the Muslim East is certainly due to these differences, it is also the product of centuries of stereotypes inflated by biased academic work. Most importantly, the struggle the United States faces today with the Muslim world has its origins in a false sense of superiority among white Europeans and the struggle for power and land. After the birth of the Islamic religion in the Arabian Peninsula, documented in the Quran, which is considered the word of God communicated to the Prophet Muhammad, in the year 610. The religion itself was similar to Christianity and Judaism, but Westerners ignored it and considered its followers as an ethnic group. This young civilization quickly began to conquer and acquire lands including all of Arabia, Persia, ancient Rome and Africa in 711. In the 15th century, the Ottomans, a powerful Muslim dynasty, began to conquer lands additional in Central and South-Eastern Europe. As Muslims continued to expand, they managed to pass on their religion to many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians in the conquered lands. The spread of Islam, among other social differences, created a cultural divide in Europe called "the Velvet Curtain", between Protestants and Catholics in the north and west, and Orthodox or Muslims in the south and east. . Western Europeans began to see Muslims as a greater threat after their reign of power, and they often described them as violent and barbaric. As the Ottoman Empire began to lose land in the 18th century, Wester...... middle of paper ...... tells the story, it was retaliation against the government's foreign policy, and not a spontaneous attack on the American people. as reported by the government. Today, when there is a disaster, including bombs or planes, the media is quick to assume and report that Islamic terrorists are to blame, and most of the time, they are wrong. Generalizations about the Orient and Islam are deeply ingrained in Western media. people and history. Americans must also confront the stereotype attributed to our government, that of the people who want to take over the world. Western cultures tend to assume that every outside civilization strives to be a replica of itself and that the citizens of these non-conforming countries seek to destroy Western people and cultures. The racism involved in these attitudes has a long history of inaccuracies, assumptions and second-hand experiences..