Samuel P. Huntington began this ongoing debate when he argued that "the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future" in a controversial 1993 essay for Foreign Affairs. One of the main cleavages Huntington identified was between the West and Islam, which he doubted was capable of embracing liberal democracy.

In the new issue of FP, former Bush speechwriter David Frum argues that the events of the last few years have vindicated* Huntington's thesis:

As they turn against the Iraq war, Americans seem also to have rejected the sunny assumptions about the Middle East upon which it was founded. Bush argued that terrorism was the work of a tiny handful of extremists, repudiated by the vast majority of Middle Easterners. His fellow Americans no longer believe him. More and more are coming to believe that Islam really is inherently hostile to democracy and the West. Civilizations are clashing. Paul Wolfowitz has lost. Sam Huntington has won.

And in a recent web exclusive for ForeignPolicy.com, former senior intelligence officer Col. W. Patrick Lang, Jr. says that it's actually these sunny assumptions—widely held by Americans—that were wrong in the first place. 

But lots of people still disagree with Huntington outright. A new poll by the BBC World Service and the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that "the global public believes that tensions between Islam and the West arise from conflicts over political power and interests and not from differences of religion and culture." Most of those surveyed blamed "intolerant minorities" for causing the clash between Islam and the West. That doesn't make them right or Huntington wrong, but it's an encouraging finding nevertheless (Political scientist Marc Lynch agrees, but sees some worrisome countervailing numbers). Much more detail here.

*UPDATE: David Frum writes in with a clarification: "I don't say that events have vindicated Huntington's thesis, but rather that events are leading Americans to believe it—a tendency I myself happen to think mistaken."

JACK GUEZ/AFP

Never one to eschew a dramatic gesture, French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has just popped up in the middle of a court case on blasphemous cartoons (several Islamic organizations had sued a French magazine for reprinting cartoons of Muhammad).

A lawyer for the magazine read a letter out from Mr Sarkozy, who is standing as presidential candidate for the right-wing UMP. Mr Sarkozy noted he was often a target of the magazine but said he would prefer "too many caricatures to an absence of caricature".

Several French Muslim organizations are overreacting, just as Sarkozy no doubt expected they would. So Sarkozy gets to make a good stand on principle, offer up some faux self-deprecation, and stand up to opponents of free speech: not a bad day's work for the man likely to be France's next president.

Egypt is one of several Sunni Arab governments that have pledged to support President Bush's new strategy in Iraq. But despite repeated requests from American and Iraqi officials, Egypt continues to broadcast violent propaganda from Iraqi Sunni insurgents, 24/7, on its Nilesat satellite television provider. Today's Thursday Video is a taste of Al Zawraa's programming, provided to FP by Lawrence Pintak, director of American University in Cairo's television journalism program:

Al Zawraa divides its hatred between Americans and Shiites:

Al Zawraa began two years ago as an above-ground, hard-line Sunni TV station, based in Iraq, until the Iraqi government closed it down last November, around the time Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death. Today, it's an underground station with brutal, no-holds-barred content, often amateur, shaky footage showing American soldiers crumpling to the ground after being shoot [sic], and alleged American atrocities against Iraqi civilians. The station's anchors wear military fatigues and rail against the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

The sectarian strife in Baghdad is spilling into the wider region. Al Zawraa appears to be a symptom of Sunni unease about the rise of the so-called Shiite Crescent. Faced with growing threats, the Egyptian government may feel pressure to support its Sunni brethren.  There are probably healthier ways to do that, however.

For another video clip from Al Zawraa, see the MEMRI Blog, which flagged this last week.

As the world's eyes focus on Baghdad, problems in other parts of the world have a stubborn way of plodding along, whether or not anyone takes notice. In Bangladesh, a fragile democracy of nearly 150 million souls, caretaker president Iajuddin Ahmed has just resigned as "chief adviser" in the face of a general strike and growing protests.  Our Thursday Video takes you to the streets of Dhaka, where violence between police and protesters is getting increasingly out of control:

Demonstrations by the opposition Awami League have thrown much of the country into chaos; the League claims that the outgoing government of the Bangladesh National Party has rigged a general election due in two weeks. The UN and the EU have both left, claiming that the deteriorating situation make it impossible to hold a free and fair vote as scheduled. A state of emergency had been declared by President Ahmed last night. 

Why does this matter? As a country made up of mostly moderate Muslims, Bangladesh is an important counterweight to more politically repressive regimes elsewhere in the Islamic world. Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Turkey, when their political systems work, show that democracy and Islam are not mutually exclusive. They also preclude the emergence of religiously-based terrorist groups by better channeling dissent. The success or failure of democracy in places like Bangladesh could reverberate in other countries, like nearby Pakistan and distant Iraq, that occupy more real estate on newspaper front pages.

MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images

Finland and other pro-Turkey European countries are scrambling to salvage the Muslim country's flagging bid join the European Union. The stumbling block? Cyprus. If the Greek Cypriots remain inflexible, Turkey doesn't back down, and the EU ultimately says no, will Turks turn away from Europe? What does Turkey think about Iran and the bomb? Will Turkey seek its own nuclear weapon? Which is a greater threat to Turkish democracy: the military or the Islamists?

To answer these and other questions, FP spoke with Mensur Akgun, an expert on Turkish foreign policy.

Dear Representative Reyes:

Congratulations on your new position as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. With the sorry state of our intelligence community and the continued specter of transnational terrorism (not to mention organized crime, narco-trafficking and nuclear proliferation), yours is an important position and I’m sure you’re enthusiastic about the job. However, I couldn’t help but be more than a little concerned this weekend when I read that you, like so many other U.S. officials involved in counterterrorism, do not know the religious layout of the greater Middle East. Knowing the difference between Sunnis, Shiites and Arab nationalists will not simply make your job easier, it will make it possible. Because I’m sure you’re busy, I took the liberty of writing up a primer for you:

You've no doubt heard it before from Washington: The West will know it is winning the war on terror when it stems the tide of Islamic radicalism. The problem with that theory, though, is that the West is still at a loss as to just what makes a Muslim radical. Some say it is poverty. Others say it is hopelessness. Still others say it is because radicals are religious fundamentalists. But those theories are wrong.

In a new ForeignPolicy.com exclusive, Dalia Mogahed, executive director of Muslim studies at the Gallup Organization, and John Esposito, a professor at Georgetown and participant in the recent U.N. panel recommending strategies to build bridges with the Muslim world, offer some fascinating new data based on an immense poll just completed by Gallup in nine Muslim countries. Their findings will surprise you: Across many indicators, Muslim radicals are often indistinguishable from their moderate bretheren. And where they do differ offers policymakers a key opportunity to prevent the moderate Muslim mainstream from sliding away, and to check the persuasive power of those who would do us harm. Don't miss it.

When it comes to Rep.-elect Keith Ellison of Minnesota, CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck just isn't sure. That's because Ellison is Muslim, which Beck said made him "nervous." Interviewing Ellison on Tuesday, Beck said he felt like questioning Ellison's loyalty to America. Then he said Ellison "could be" a shining example to European countries that are struggling with multiculturalism.

Seriously, this is why I refuse to watch CNN Headline News, which has the most thoughtless programming of any 24-hour news network. Here's a news flash for Glenn Beck and CNN producers: Not all Midwesterners are white. And they're not all Christian, either. Also, you might try learning a thing or two about a congressman-elect before you interview him. Ellison was born in Detroit, not Mogadishu. He hasn't "integrated" into America -- he was born here.

Here's the exchange:

BECK: [M]ay we have five minutes here where we're just politically incorrect and I play the cards face up on the table?

ELLISON: Go there.

BECK: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil.... With that being said, you are a Democrat ... what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

ELLISON: Well, let me tell you, the people of the Fifth Congressional District know that I have a deep love and affection for my country. There's no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don't need to -- need to prove my patriotic stripes.

BECK: I understand that. And I'm not asking you to.... And I think it's wonderful, honestly, I think it is really a good sign that you are a -- you could be an icon to show Europe, this is the way you integrate into a country.

Hat tip: Media Matters

The absurd view of Australia's most senior Muslim cleric that women who don't cover up in the Islamic fashion are inviting sexual assault has reignited the whole veil debate. His rather revealing parallel was, "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?"

With public condemnation—rightly—raining down on him, he has felt obliged to backtrack. (Though his apology is a classic example of that weasely genre of 'I'm sorry if anyone took offense' apologies.) But there is no doubt that his remarks are going to further polarize a debate that is already in danger of spinning out of control. We've raced from the reasonable suggestion that wearing the full veil isn't conducive to integration, to claiming that "wearing the nikab in this country at this time is an expression of affinity with the enemy."

Great Britain isn't the only nation facing controversy over the niqab, the full Islamic veil that reveals nothing but a woman's eyes. Agence France Presse reports that women who wear the niqab have been banned from the residence halls of Egypt's Helwan University. The reason? The dean of Helwan, Abdel- Hay Abaid is worried about "individuals who might worm their way in, disguised under a face veil." If a man made it into the women's halls, he said, "their parents would kill me."

When I was back in Britain the other week, I was struck by how every day the major news story was about the issue of Muslim integration. First, it was a Muslim cop being excused from guarding the Israeli Embassy during the conflict in Lebanon. Then it was a Muslim cab driver fined for refusing to carry a guide dog he thought religiously unclean. Finally, the veteran Labour politician Jack Straw set off a firestorm by suggesting that Muslim women shouldn’t wear the full veil. 

The debate is continuing to accelerate. In just the last few days we’ve had the Communities Secretary saying that the government wouldn’t fund Muslim groups which don’t actively combat extremism, a substitute teacher suspended for refusing to take off the full veil while teaching young children, and a report that the government has asked academics to spy on their students. Non-hysterical commentators are discussing the possibility of a Kulturkampf.

The veil issue unites two very different sections of British opinion. On the one hand, there are the “assimilationists” who object to the veil as an in-your-face statement of difference and otherness. Then, there are the liberals who believe the veil subjugates women and insist that no woman wears it voluntarily. (Those who think they are wearing it of their own free will are presumed to be suffering from false consciousness.)

Banning the veil would be phenomenally illiberal. Hoping that people choose not to wear it, though, is not unreasonable. As is their wont, the self-appointed Muslim leadership is using the issue to further divide and polarize the country. In an op-ed in The Guardian today, the deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain writes:

Since John Reid demanded that Muslim "bullies" must be faced down and Jack Straw declared the veil a "statement of separation", ministers have fallen over themselves to make increasingly unbridled attacks on Muslims.

A look at what John Reid and Jack Straw actually said illustrates the absurdity of the charge. Straw expressed "concern that wearing the full veil [is] bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult. It [is] such a visible statement of separation and of difference.” Nowhere did he propose banning it or forcing women to remove it. For his part, Reid was actually standing up for moderate Muslims whose voices are drowned out by "extremist bullies." Constant grandstanding by non-elected Muslim  leaders may so polarize the country that it could spark the “Kulturkampf” that should all be desperate to avoid.

In the most recent New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash takes a look at Ian Buruma's new book on the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Buruma seems to break new ground in his assesment that the schizophrenia experienced by Europe's Muslim communities may as much literal as it is cultural. Garton Ash writes that...

Buruma meets a psychiatrist specializing in the mental problems of immigrants. Apparently women, and the first generation of immigrant men, tend to suffer from depression; second-generation men, from schizophrenia. According to his research, a second-generation Moroccan male is ten times more likely to be schizophrenic than a native Dutchman from a similar economic background.

Whether this amounts to dubious psychological research or a shocking insight is hard to tell.

Reuters reports today that reformers in the Saudi royal family have pushed forward a new comedic soap opera for Ramadan that ridicules Islamic radicalism. The timing of the show is especially significant because Ramadan soap operas, called musalsalat, draw not only the highest ratings of the year (think sweeps), but because they serve as a cultural touchstone during Islam's holiest month. The new tone is also significant because musalsalat have not always served as platforms from which to assail extremism. During Ramadan in 2002, Egyptian television aired the series A Horseman without a Horse, which was based in part on the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, stirring protest from both the United States and Israel.  

But this year the protests are coming from Muslim clerics who deem the comedy offensive to Islam (though perhaps it's because the show ridicules militants at a clerical school). The Saudi response? They've pulled the show from state television, but are instead shipping it to the widely-watched (and Saudi-owned) Middle East Broadcasting Corporation in the United Arab Emirates.