In a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Bernard Lewis -- who invented the term "clash of civilizations" in the 1950s -- held forth on what he sees as Islam's latest imperial plot.

He outlines a world in which nefarious, plotting Muslims are busily taking
over Europe, an event that he describes as a reconquest. Not content to rely
merely on terrorism, the Muslims are cleverly using an even more insidious
tactic: migration! Even more cleverly, these evildoers are using their
dangerously high birth rate to make use of the deadly weapon of
"demography." Think I'm exaggerating? For those of you who haven't bothered
to read the speech, here are some important excerpts:

"In the eyes of a fanatical and resolute minority of Muslims, the third wave of attack on Europe has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms and two in particular: terror and migration. ... Where do we stand now? Is it third time lucky? It is not impossible. They have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries."

There are, says Lewis, "signs of a return among Muslims to what they
perceive as the cosmic struggle for world domination between the two main
faiths--Christianity and Islam," part of a "Muslim attack on Christendom."

And he quotes what he admits is an apocryphal letter (a "declaration of
war") from the Prophet Muhammad stating the prophet's goal of world
domination:

"The declaration of war begins at the very beginning of Islam. There are certain letters purported to have been written by the Prophet Muhammad to the Christian Byzantine emperor, the emperor of Persia, and various other rulers, saying, "I have now brought God's final message. Your time has passed. Your beliefs are superseded. Accept my mission and my faith or resign or submit--you are finished." The authenticity of these prophetic letters is doubted, but the message is clear and authentic in the sense that it does represent the long dominant view of the Islamic world."

Oh. One more thing. Sitting in front of him was VP Cheney. Lewis couldn't
pointing out (and here I am assuming he didn't make this up) that when
Muslim raiders invaded Ireland and took prisoners back to Algiers in 1631,
they captured a Cheney: "In a contemporary document, we have a list of 107
captives who were taken from Baltimore [Ireland] to Algiers, including a man
called Cheney." So THAT'S why Cheney supports Lewis' clash of civilizations:
it's clan revenge.