The radical middle: Building bridges between the Muslim and Western worlds

In the views of many, the contemporary world in which we live appears to be marked most prominently by the emergence of what is regularly referred to as “a clash of civilizations”. Proponents of the discourse of a clash have sought confirmation of their views by pointing to the increasing hostility and animosity between cultural regions—most obviously between the Islamic and Western worlds—that has defined the last quarter of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first centuries.