The irony of the great conflict (or, at times, game) between Western Christianity (which has its own divisions of mortal enmity) and Islamic fundamentalism, is that the most vitriolic and intractable forces on either side occupy the same position of social conservatism within their society. Left solitary and adrift, they would most naturally land in the part of the other society that was most intractably opposed to their own cast of mind. There is a reason for this. This opposition is animated by the larger movement of encounter. Closeness and similarity, not difference and distance, brings conflict. (Girard is essential.) This isn't just irony and folly. The encounter and the conflict have a purpose. The preservation of all things under different aspects.
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Think of it as an island surrounded by land, and all around the shore, people are building bridges to it. They will usually succeed, given the cunning of the island. But it is possible that one of the land-dwellers can find himself on a bridge on which he will not be able to get to the half of the bridge nearest the island without an extraordinary bit of luck, grace, what you will.
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Tread gently.