Introduction

A global rise in terrorist attacks and the terrorizing US military cam-

paigns during the first decade of the twenty-first century have once again

raised the specter of Islam as the principal nemesis of ‘‘the Western civiliza-

tion.’’ The daily headlines across the world report of deadly terrorist attacks and even more devastating carnage caused by the US-led military invasions and

colonial occupations of sovereign nation-states. In the midst of this violent

spiral of fear and fury, ‘‘Islam and the West’’ are once again posited as the prin-

cipal coded categories of this global confrontation between two irreconcilable

adversaries.