Surely the hypothesis that Islam and Christianity will go to war/are at war, etc. Depends very much upon the supposition that the only factor causing conflict is religion?
There are a host of other factors which could be equally to blame for the rise of ‘Islamic’ terror…
Firstly and most obviously, the Israeli/Palestinian issue. Most ‘Islamic’ terrorism over the last 40 years has been carried out by Palestinian groups, and has been directly related to the issue of two groups of people wanting to live in the same place. Whilst religion has played a part in this, the most fundamental cause of the schism is that two groups want the same land, and they merely happen to be defined upon religous grounds. The Falklands conflict would be an example of the same kind of war/conflict, except that in that instance the protaganists are not defined by religion but by nationality. (Which is not in this case a religous construct.)
Economic factors also play a part. Without wishing to go too far into it, we have a situation where much of what happens to be the Islamic world could also be defined as the ‘Essential Raw Material Producers’. (Oil bearing Middle East) The entirety of the Islamic world also resides in the ‘Raw Material Producers’ section of the world. (This would encompass non-oil producing Islamic areas as well as non-islamic 3rd world nations) As a result, there is an element of conflict as the ‘consumer’ nations (in this case the Christian West) and ‘producer’ nations have undergone a long period of economic and sometimes military conflict to ensure that one or the other gets the best deal. We are also in a phase where the ‘producer’ nations are realising that the ‘consumers’ need the product just as much as they need the custom, and that they resent having to live in a buyers market.
As a quick, ‘off the top of my head’ pair of examples, I hope these illustrate that the “Muslim-Christian” conflict only exists as such if you define the players in purely religous terms. If you define them in economic terms, then it becomes an economic conflict, if you define them in national terms, then it becomes a conflict of two blocks of associated nations. Obviously, I am not trying to show that there is no religous element to the conflict, but in my opinion, religion is largely a provider of convenient rhetoric and a sense of shared group identity, rather than the fundamental key to the issue of ‘Islamic terror’. This I would put down largely to the Israel/Palestine issue and widespread economic resentment.
To skim over the further detail I could go into, I do also hold that the economic performance of the Islamic states (and many African ones) may be in part due to the fatalistic and caste ridden cultures and religions found there, which do not quickly translate into capitalist success (it is happening slowly though.)
I also would not like anyone to suggest that my comments contain any implied judgements of the rightness and wrongness of anyone involved. (This is before everyone accuses me of being an apologist for Islamic terrorism by blaming it all on the nasty capitalist west, because I’m not.)
