I like a number of points you make in the posts 29 -33, and, please, allow me to contribute a few words here.
In regards of Africa irrelevance and isolation as the most basic form of accommodation:
Muslim world is a source of oil. Or better put: OIL. It’s the biggest and often the only significant source of income for those countries. If not the OIL, they would be irrelevant as Africa now and easily ignored.
There is a good argument that they need us as much as we need them: somebody has to buy their oil to give them money after all. But the recent events show that normal economic pragmatism is not always in the picture. Islamist put their religious fanatical ideas ahead of the economics. They would have no problem to cut the oil supply at least for a while, create panic on the world markets, deeper recession, etc. They don’t control all oil in the world, of course, but more than enough to do a lot of damage. Iraq has no problem to starve their own population, in the same time building palaces and arming the army, and blame us for the starvation. They do sell oil now, and they do have more than enough resources not to have starving children. It’s not their priority though.
Osama’s brand of fanatics would do the same after getting control over the oil fields. Almost all oil-rich regimes in the area are sitting on the islamist powder keg ready to blow up. If not the ruthlessness of the current rulers, it would happen already. Normal people in all overtaken countries would suffer, but fanatics would not even notice. They have shown willingness to die for their idea. They did attack us. They want war. They asked for war. (I think they underestimated us, but it’s another story…) So, they would not think twice to shut down the oil supply, and sit back and enjoy a nice western chaos.
My point is: despite how much I personally wish, as we stand now, does not look like the West can simply separate from the Muslim world, shut the doors, and let them brew.
It is difficult to isolate the evolution of the relationship between Islam and Christendom to a few factors because so much was going on for so long within the two. Islam's success in the seventh century at the expense of Christendom was aided if not caused by the schism of the latter between Rome and Constantinople, a schism that hindered the defense of Christendom in the latter until it finally fell to the former in 1543. However, in the meantime Islam fell prey to schism as well, first between what became Sunni and Shiite, then between the Omiyyad and Abbaside factions, and finally between the Arab caliphs and the Seljuk/Ottoman sultans, religious and military respectively. Once this took place Islam experienced a resurgence on the part of its Christian foes.
Because of this it is no longer possible to lump the development of either major division into a monolithic group. At the eastern and western wings of Islam cultural and religious toleration were the norm; it might be argued that these (Isfahan/Baghdad and Toledo, respectively) were the real genesis of Islamic cultural flowering. Much of this was, in fact, not even by Muslims - in the east, the famous translations of the Greek cultural works were done by Nestorian Christians; in the west, much of the work was done by Jews. Both of these populations found living under Muslim rule preferable to the greater oppression of the Christian neighbors (in the west) and schismatic coreligionists (in the east). Here the key, IMHO, was toleration, a toleration not much evidenced in the middle of the Islamic geography, which not coincidentally corresponds to the present-day Middle East. There massacre was more the norm than toleration; it was there that "convert or die" became policy. Not a lot has changed in that sense since the original Omar went marching through in the mid-seventh century.
So instead of two opposing "cultures" we really have a dozen or more, and overlaying this is the different behavior each showed with respect to the industrial revolution, several centuries later. It is an oversimplification to claim that secular societies embraced that where theocratic ones did not - Western societies, even American society, weren't that secular, yet, and even some theocratic Eastern societies not under Islam (Japan comes to mind) embraced the industrial revolution suddenly and successfully. So it wasn't that, either.
What it really was I do not profess to know, and will happily leave to theorists such as Professor Lewis. But to view the current "clash of civilizations" as bilateral between West and Islam is not a position that bears up very well under either historical or current political analysis. IMHO, of course...
Thanks for your posts. First, about OIL, we have to reduce our exposure by all means necessary - nuclear power, drilling in Alaska, switching into buying OIL from friendlier suppliers. Arab oil is cheap as long as you are not counting cost maintaining stability in the region, once it is factored in Norway's one would look more and more attractive. Also, by reducing demand we would have a very good leverage into getting some oil from Muslim world without being politically involved there.
I am affraid I do not quite understand what do you mean under accomodation. Let us assume that we are neighbors and I happen to be stronger than you. Does accomodation mean that any time you are in the mood to burn my house I have just smile and put out the fires and in exchange I have a right to go into your house and lecture you for hours about importance of brashing your teeth every morning ?
IMHO, accomodation is that I will beat crap out of you every time you try to burn my house, at the same time I am not going into your house with a goal of establish my rules over there (e.g. telling you to empower your wife).
BTW, let another wonder of long term isolation - it seems like Libiya is slowly coming to some sense.