INFLUENTIAL Harvard University politics professor Samuel Huntington, who died on Christmas Eve, is best known for his theory that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War meant future international conflict would no longer be between competing superpowers or economic ideologies but between groups of nations belonging to one of eight civilisations based loosely on culture and religion.

The principle clash would involve three civilisations  Western (the US and Europe), Confucian (based around China) and Islamic.

Huntington's thesis appeared in a journal in 1993. Since the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001, the theory has been co-opted by extremists seeking to impose their violent sectarian prejudices on the rest of us. The intricacies and nuances of his theory have been replaced by incoherent rants.

Tabloid columnists from New York to Sydney cite Huntington in support of the ridiculous notion that Europe will necessarily become "Eurabia". Their equivalents in Karachi and Jakarta impose Osama bin Laden's logic on Huntington when writing about the existence of a "grand crusader and Jewish conspiracy against Islam".

Huntington's original voice has become the distorted echo of cultural jihad. The reality is much more complex. It is impossible to divide people into neat categories of "Muslim" or "Western" or "Sinic" (Chinese). When visiting a mosque, I'm happy to join my brothers  and, in some Australian cases, sisters  praying towards Mecca. But I would rather learn my theology from American imams at the Zaytuna Institute in California than from the Saudi religious establishment. I also understand that not everyone who listens to the same music I have on my iPod necessarily supports Western hegemony.