I've always felt that our rabid Christian preachers and their rabid mullahs are explicit enemies but implicit allies. Both support a misbegotten idea of what God demands -- total faith and unquestioning obedience. Both sides also skew and cheat about what the other actually believes. If you want to fuel prejudice, any religion can be made to look rigid, hide-bound, intolerant, and inhumane. Does it really matter when a bomb explodes in a busy night club whether it was thrown by a member of the IRA or al-Sadr's militia? When Christians fight Muslims to prove the supremacy of one religion over another, both have defiled their faiths.

What makes implicit allies out of explicit enemies boils down to one idea, the single worst idea ever promulgated: that God needs defending.