ABSTRACT
After 9/11 President Bush invited the world to choose sides: one had either to join the forces of good in the world, the upholders of civilisation and civility, or conversely, be counted among the evildoers. Having adopted this dichotomous world-view, the logical next step was to sort through the nations of the world and categorise them accordingly. Bush was perpetuating an old and well-established colonial habit. Colonialism divided the world into the civilised and the uncivilised, and declared that the white man’s burden was to civilise the world, by force if necessary. It projected the exact same paradigm upon Islam. Accordingly, orientalists, who were often in the service of colonial powers, claimed that Islam divided the world into two abodes. They presumed that Muslims wished to convert the whole world, by force if necessary, to Islam. In reality, it was the coloniser, and not the colonised, that had adopted a missionary or crusading attitude vis-à-vis the other.
