by Andrew Sullivan

About the author: Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor of the weekly magazine the New Republic.

Perhaps the most admirable part of the response to the conflict that began on September 11 has been a general reluctance to call it a religious war. Officials and commentators have rightly stressed that this is not a battle between the Muslim world and the West, that the murderers are not representative of Islam. President George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington to reinforce the point. At prayer meetings across the United States and throughout the world, Muslim leaders have been included alongside Christians, Jews and Buddhists.

The only problem with this otherwise laudable effort is that it doesn’t hold up under inspection. The religious dimension of this conflict is central...