In The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam, journalist Eliza Griswold explores tensions along the degree of latitude 700 miles north of the equator through Africa and Asia, where most of the world’s Christians and Muslims live. During her journeys, she found that conflicts over religious differences, when given enough scrutiny, turned out to be over something else.

Take Muslim herders in North Africa. They are nomadic. They move with the seasons. When water dries up in the north, they move south to land owned by Christian farmers. Clashes over resources, which are scarce, inevitably arise, as do explanations about why they are clashing. As Griswold told NPR’s Rachel Martin: “What happens suddenly, well, your neighbor isn’t just trying to take your land for his cows. He’s part of the Muslim majority who’s trying to knock you off your land. And so this kind of group-think or mob mentality comes in. When that happens, that frequently takes on the color of religion.”

Such fears can be and are exploited for political and corporate gain, depending on those in positions of power. But beyond the rhetoric, confusion, emotions and misunderstandings, the real source of the so-called “clash of civilizations” doesn’t appear to be religious. It’s mostly economic.

So Glenn Beck has much to be thankful for. His well-documented and much-discussed career in truthiness is no discredit to him, not with history on his side. The unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent (the real jobless rate is closer to 20 percent). Beck has a huge audience that has been hammered over 30 years by the faceless forces of globalization. They are scared and they are eager to find blame, as Robert Reich, former labor secretary under Clinton, writes, “ — in people who look or act differently, who come from foreign lands, who have what seem to be strange religions and who cross borders illegally.”

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Republicans may take the House, but not by much

The army of crazy

As soldiers get new camouflage, a surplus of information could make war invisible

A Paucity of Sense

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In the Lower Manhattan Islamic center debate, everyone is pretending to be something they're not

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Last week, I dedicated this space to conservatives’ new fling with Islamophobia, which manifested in Bridgeport in the form of Flip Benham, a thug of the Christian right, who led a 15-person strike on the Masjid An-Noor mosque, harassing worshippers with placards reading “Islam is a Lie” and shouts of “Jesus hates Muslims.” This teabagger-era second wave of post-9/11 xenophobia has only gotten worse.

A week ago, Masjid An-Noor didn’t have permanent hecklers, just some dopes who dropped in from Dallas. But last Thursday, two pudgy dolts from Homeward Bound Ministries of Milford waddled up and down Fairfield Avenue, passing out pamphlets telling mosque-goers their religion was an evil sham. (The mosque is now asking for extra police protection.) And a week ago, no one had heard of “terror babies,” a concept from the nexus of anti-Islam and anti-immigration hysterias. Though the FBI says it’s bull, two Texas politicians claim Middle Eastern women are timing their deliveries to coincide with a visit to the U.S. so 20-odd years from now those kids can use their 14th Amendment-granted citizenship in an al-Qaida plot. Both had meltdowns on CNN when Anderson Cooper pressed them for some evidence.

As the Shadow War comes into the light, we should be watching Michael Vickers more closely