“Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration labeled the conflict into which it plunged this country the ‘war on terror’…. The more pressing question is: Are we, or are we not, engaged in a larger clash of civilizations? If the answer is ‘We are’, the clash long predates 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and George W. Bush. It predates America itself. It is a clash between Western civilization and the Islamic world.”

Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 October 2006