The end of the Cold War gave rise to the hope that a new era of international cooperation was about to begin. With the world no longer divided into rival camps along ideological lines, nations would be free to find common interests and to work together to achieve common objectives. However, little more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, many observers were convinced that a new global dividing line had emerged, this time with the West pitted against militant Islam. The two documents included here challenged the validity of this claim. In the first, Amartya Sen examines the proposition that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were part of a larger “clash of civilizations.” In the second, Tariq Ramadan maps out a vision of the future of Muslims in the West, one that did not involve either the abandonment of Islamic principles or the isolation of Muslims from their non-Muslim neighbors.