The author graduated from the University of Strasbourg III. He practiced for nearly twenty years as an academic teacher in public law and international relations.He is also specialist in Islamic Studies.? .. Thus, there has become established in the collective mentality of the West, accustomed as it is to anxiety and adversity, the idea that ? We have an appointment with Islam. This appointment is daily in the towns of Europe, but also in Karachi, in New York, in Teheran and Istanbul.Since the 11th of September 2001, since the attacks in Madrid, London and Charm el Sheik, few in the West have any doubt that we have entered a phase of confrontation with that civilization. ?.However, serious and acute observers have put forward a different way of understanding the outbreaks of violence which have occurred in different places; they hold that ?the logic, the motives and the manifestations are different. Each outbreak may certainly give rise to intolerable acts and deeds, which should be opposed, but without seeing them as one and the same and without lumping them together.Which is something which certain merchan