I talked to Pulitzer-prize winning author Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11) at the end of last month for a long interview in the Daily Star Egypt. Wright was in Cairo for three years in the late 60s and early 70s; he was a conscientious objector to Vietnam and came to study and teach at AUC instead. His book and now his one-man play, "My Trip to Al Qaeda," create a compelling narrative account of the lead-up to 9/11 and his own experience interviewing hundreds of subjects, from Saudi princes to FBI agents to jihadists, for his book.

Read the full interview here.  

An excerpt:

What would you say to people who describe 9/11, its precursors and the years since as part of an inherent clash of civilizations?

Well, for one thing it’s not inherent. Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it. Also, I think it’s wrong to think of it as a clash between civilizations, because Islam is not really a civilization but a religion that exists in civilizations all over the world. That is a mischaracterization. I think that, for the most part, the clashes come from a clash of identity within civilizations that feel threatened.

In Belgium, for example, the number one name for a child born today is Mohammed, which isn’t that surprising because Mohammed is the most popular name in the whole world right now. But if you were someone of Flemish ancestry, you must be saying to yourself, where is this going? What is happening to my country’s history and language, our precious place in the world? And if you’re Mohammed you’re probably thinking, they speak for someone else; I’m not one of them.

And it’s very likely that Mohammed has never been to Morocco, or may not even speak Arabic. But he’s really lost. It’s not surprising that he goes off to this mosque and associates with other angry and alienated young men and that Islam becomes more than a religion; it becomes a complete identity. That is why I call it a clash of identity within civilizations. It’s different wherever you go. It’s different in Europe than in the Middle East. It’s different in Indonesia. There are many different expressions of these feelings of alienation, rather than this clash of civilizations.