The US media, Huntington and September 11

The mainstream quality media in the USA - unlike that of Europe framed September 11 within the context of Islam, culture and civilisations. In other words, it explained the crisis by resorting to Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of civilizations'. This article has three aims: to illustrate how the media did so; to answer the question why it did so; and to explore the implications of doing so both for the general public and for the academic community. The article argues that the main attraction of the Huntington paradigm is its attempt to analyse international relations without discussing actual politics - especially the issue of Palestine in particular and of Arab nationalism in general.