Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks.

I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.

Israel has military capabilities including nuclear weapons, far surpassing any other power in the Middle East, but it's a small country. The rest of the Middle Eastern peoples are Muslim and Israelis are not, so it is hardly in any position to become the leading power.

People everywhere talk about Islam and the West. Presumably that has some relationship to reality, that these are entities that have some meaning and they do. Of course the core ofthat reality is differences in religion.

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new [post-Cold-War] world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

Obviously Muslim societies, like societies elsewhere, are becoming increasingly urban, many are becoming industrial, but since so many have oil and gas, they don't have a great impetus. But again, the revenue that natural resources produce gives them the capability and so countries like Iran are beginning to develop an industrial component.