Western foreign policy, when push comes to shove: Democracy sacrificed for Stability?

[Hax]

And many Islamic countries refer to most of the west as "Christian" when a more correct term would be "Secular".

Do remember that some people also refer to their own countries as (Judeao)Christian, here in the west. Notable examples? Geert Wilders, for example, or what about Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly. They are like the radical imams of the American right wing, if you forgive the simile. Hell, George W. Bush himself said he had been inspired by God and he called the Republican Party "God's party". You know how that would translate to Arabic?

Hizbollah.

EDIT: Just for clarification, I'm not really in the position to debate on whether or how "the Islamic countries/regimes/(religious)authorities" view the western states, I just wanted to point out that it is not necessarily something just they do.

EDIT 2:

Why does the US and others balk at the idea of even a mildly Islamist government? Would the US be as safe (less or more?) if it relaxed a bit about political Islam, recognising as Mr Grenier does, a difference between AL Qaida type violent jihadis and other Islamist political organisations?

While it's not really fair to draw a comparison with the Salafiyya-Wahhabi Sunni organisations and the Twelver Shi'a government of Iran, but this reminds me of what went wrong there in '79. The Shah and his SAVAK were probably less horrible than the Supreme Leader and his basiji, but what irked the Iranian people is the fact that the US and the UK (especially those two) went to such great lengths to support that regime. Of course, we know why, but that's not really important right now.

I think the reason why the US fears an Islamist government in any middle-eastern country is because they'd be afraid that they'd use it as a base to export their Islamism. Of course, Iran was never interested in exporting the revolution, as they don't really think in terms like "dar al-Islam" or "dar al-harb", but al-Qaeda does. Of course, when you look at al-Qaeda, you'll notice that they're basically idiots with western-style education that have been brainwashed by pseudo-imams that cherrypicked verses from the Qur'an or the Hadiths.