The Jihad Is a Civil War, the West Only a Bystander

BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'NO GOD BUT GOD'
The Jihad Is a Civil War, the West Only a Bystander
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: May 4, 2005

For many in the West, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center turned a page in world history. They signaled the onset of a monumental struggle between fundamentalist Islam and modern, secular democracy, what the Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington has called a "clash of civilizations."

Not so, Reza Aslan argues in "No god but God." "What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West," he writes. "The West is merely a bystander - an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story."