The Cube, the Cube and the Cathedral
George Weigel’s 2005 book about the culture war in Europe between secularists and Christians bears the title The Cube and the Cathedral. The cube refers to a symbol of secularism, the Great Arch of La Défense in Paris.
I have argued repeatedly that there is a three way culture war going on in Europe between secularists, Christians and Muslims. On some issues Christians and secularists team up against Muslims, on other issues secularists fight Christians and Muslims alike. Early this year George Weigel adopted my concept of the three way culture war, most notably in an article in Commentary last May.
Now, however, radical Muslims are also claiming the cube as their symbol. Islamists have taken offense at an Apple store in Manhattan because the building is cube-shaped as is the Ka’ba in Mecca. An Islamist website claims the Apple store “is meant to provoke Muslims.” However, as Professor Kemal Silay writes, “Islamists have been struggling to turn any Western object that they can imagine into a so-called ‘insult to Islam.’ As a Muslim myself, I see no insult to Islam in a computer store but I see plenty of it in Islamism itself.”

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