Question: I recently heard Islam characterized as the next major threat to "Western" civilization, the new Evil Empire that will succeed Communism. Sounds like a major oversimplification, but could you comment on it?

Answer: At the risk of oversimplification in the other direction, I would respond that, alas, every society needs its Evil Empire. When no obvious candidate fills the bill, we will conjure one up in the vain hope that somehow it will make us feel better about ourselves. During the past couple of decades there has been much talk about "resurgent Islam," fueled by such events as the Iranian Revolution, the Palestinian Intifada, and the ascendancy of the Afghan Taliban. Books with titles like The Islamic Bomb: The Nuclear Threat to Israel and the Middle East (1982) raise the specter of some sort of nuclear conspiracy, as though Islam represented a unitary political will intent on world domination. In fact, "Islam" is nothing quite like the various "isms" one can realistically imagine bringing political and economic resources to bear on some global or even regional objective - capitalism, communism, colonialism, imperialism, or - on a smaller scale - Zionism, for example. 

On the other side of that coin, neither is "the West" anything like a unified secularist bloc of political, economic, and cultural determination, set adamantly against the real or imagined religio-moral fervor of "the East,".

Still, it is much easier to construe the world as neatly defined opposing forces than to come to terms with the common humanity that underlies all our differences.

Muslims are on the whole just about as susceptible to these kinds of generalizations as non-Muslims, however, and are often co-responsible for perpetuating the sweeping dichotomy. In short, Islam as a religious tradition is in no way a threat to world peace and order. On the contrary, it is as important a force for maintaining peace and order as any other tradition.

Excerpted from 101 Questions and Answers on Islam by John Renard. The author holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Harvard University and is a professor of theological studies at st. Louis University.

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