Richard:

Implicit (or, perhaps, explicit) in your response is the idea that the "West" and "Islam" are mutually exclusive and enduring oppositional terms. I certainly don't see it that way--nor, I suspect, do many Muslim Canadians (or Americans). al-Qa'ida does, it is true. However, that is all the more reason not to buy into the clash-of-civilizations worldview, in my opinion.

Equally, while one could cite many examples of Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East colliding, one could point to, I suspect, just as many cases of political alliances that cross-cut religious lines—and certainly far, far more cases where countries fought coreligionists. Indeed, Muslim-Christian difference has been a poor predictor of military confrontation in the broader Mediterranean world for a very long time.

Having said that, it really isn't my main point. Rather, I want to suggest that "Islamic insurgents" is not a very useful category, since it assigns political significance (or draws some inference about mobilization, operations, doctrine, or technique) from the religious affiliation of combatants who may be fighting in a variety of ways for a variety of causes. The term Islamist insurgent (or militant) is somewhat more useful, since it narrows the field down to those groups that emphasize a political message and popular mobilization around a particular highly political reading of Islam, and who conceptualize their political goals in religious terms. However, even here, there are Islamists, and there are Islamists—some militant, most not, and even the former variegated in many very important ways.