Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : Huntington and "Islam's bloody borders" / Stig Jarle Hansen, Atle Mesøy, Tuncay Kardas -- Asia and the Middle East : borders at the centre of Islam? / Stig Jarle Hansen. Israel/Palestine : multiple agendas and division lines / Andrew Rigby and Jørgen Johansen ; Lebanon : between "clash" and coexistence / Hicham Bou Nassif ; Afghanistan : "friction" between civilizations / Antonio Giustozzi ; Pakistan : have the chickens come home to roost? / Kavita Khory ; Indonesia : the radicalization of Islam / Kirsten Schulze ; Philippines : "civilizational" or colonial border? / Ben Reid -- Africa, the crescent of Islam / Stig Jarle Hansen. Nigeria : Islamist activism and religious conflicts / Sakah Mahmud ; Somalia : grievance, religion, clan, and profit / Stig Jarle Hansen ; Ethiopia : on the borders of Christianity / Terje Østebø ; Sudan : trying to understand its "multiple marginality" / Gérard Prunier -- The "old" European border / Stig Jarle Hansen. Chechnya : how war makes jihad / James Hughes ; Turkey : secularism, Islam and the EU / Tuncay Kardas ; Bosnia : religion and identity / Svein Mønnesland ; Spain : the Al Andalus legacy / Elena Arigita -- The new borders / Atle Mesøy. Britain : rejecting western modernity? / Dominique Thomas ; France : the clash of civilizations? / Farhad Khosrokhavar ; Scandinavia : alienation or integration? / Atle Mesøy and Stig Jarle Hansen ; The United States of America : American Muslim exceptionalism / Allen D. Hertzke ; A virtual border conflict / Stig Jarle Hansen and Atle Mesøy.

"In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington argued that the borders between Western and Islamic civilizations would one day become the loci of cultural conflict. The statements of Osama Bin-Laden would seem to support this view. "This battle is not between al-Qaeda and the U.S.," he famously said in October of 2001. "This is a battle of Muslims against the Global Crusaders."" "These specially commissioned essays critically examine the virtual and actual borders of Islamic civilization. Contributors concentrate on local dynamics and whether they support or contradict an emerging global confrontation between Islam and its Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and secular neighbors. They consider borders that host Muslim majorities (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Somalia, Pakistan, and Turkey), those that have significant Muslim minorities (Philippines, Nigeria, and India), and those that reflect new faultlines created by migration to France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Spain or by advances in technology." "Essays explore the rise of international Salafi jihadism and whether it can be traced to countries that straddle the Islamic and non-Islamic world. In conclusion, the contributors argue that mechanisms far more complex than those described in Huntington's Clash of Civilizations influence many border regions, suggesting that, while poverty and institutional failure heighten religious awareness and practice, the actual effects of these phenomena are entirely different."--BOOK JACKET.