It was the events of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington that launched a new era in the troubled relationship between Islam and the West. This new era has been no less complex than the previous 14 centuries of cooperation, competition, and conflict. Indeed, even before the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the lands south of the Mediterranean and beyond to Arabia and Central Asia had a tense relationship of trade and religion with Europe, the heartland of what would become known as the West.

There was always something wrong with the way the relationship was conceptualized. Islam is a religion for believers and an "other" for nonbelievers. It was never connected to the civilizational roots of its geographic origins in Egypt and Mesopotamia but was ready to connect to Christianity and Judaism. The West is much more a civilization that mixed Christianity as a religion with historic and cultural roots of the Hellenic and Roman times down to the Enlightenment and the industrial age. Islam and the West are different entities that have become entangled by man in a historic discovery of light and blood.

This long journey has been shaped and reshaped by time, technology and the balance of power. The modern era was formed by the colonial age, technology, and intra-Western hot and cold wars. But contemporary times are shaped by globalization and the events of 9/11 that called for a new way of discovering the other. Stereotypes have been handy for both sides to characterize and define one another. For Muslims who have identified the West at times with Christianity and elsewhere with historical legacies, the West is nothing but cowboys, colonialists, crusaders, conspirators and capitalists adamant to destroy Islam and Muslims. In response to these five Cs of Islam there are five Bs for the West, where Islam and Muslims are nothing but a manifestation of the backward, the bedouin, the bazaar mentality, the oil billionaire and, of course, the bomber.

The negative perceptions were deepened by the misunderstanding of the tragic events of 9/11. Muslims never understood why they should be held accountable for a terrorist act perpetrated by a few. For the West, it was never clear exactly where the motive for killing 3,000 victims was - whether it was located in Islam or Muslims or their societies. These two lacunae of understanding were soon to be mixed with old festering problems of the Arab-Israel conflict.

The Afghan and Iraq wars were woven in agony and bewilderment about friends, allies and enemies. Old and well-established relationships between the West and countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia were soon to suffer tension and acrimony. The "Greater Middle East" formula of the great powers was for Muslims no less than a grand assault on their lands. The photos from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons were soon to portray the fight against terror as no more than a vendetta. The popularity of Osama bin Laden and his followers in Muslim countries would testify to communities that failed their test of history.

These latter day formulations are not mere expressions of the angry, the parochial or the patronizing. Rather, they are the tip of the iceberg, hiding a sophisticated machine of thinkers, political movements and fundamentalists of all types. The new age has been shaped by the ideas of the historian Bernard Lewis and groups of neoconservatives in whose glaring view Islam - and Muslims - are the new enemy of the West, while Islamic fundamentalists wait on the other side to find living proof of a society and a religion that are eternally hunted by the damned and the aggressor.

Hence both the present and the future belong to the zealots and the inspired. History may have changed with the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but the equation did not. The winners in both cases are the fundamentalist Sunnis and Shiites. Iran got rid of the moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, and replaced him with an ideologue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Sharia Court fanatics took control of the Somali street. Hamas took over the Palestinian people and built a base in Gaza.

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Sudan and Algeria there is a struggle among moderate, conservative and radical modes of fundamentalism. Far beyond to the East, the rest of the Islamic world has to find its way between resistance and joining the bandwagon of the West. The latter in its own way presses the attack. Both Islam and the West are in dire need of a reassessment that does not seem possible in the near future.

Abdel-Monem Said Aly is director of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter publishing views of Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs.