Daily Inspiration Quote by Polly Toynbee

Toynbee’s line is a deliberate act of reframing: she takes a phrase that’s been used to inflame identity politics - “clash of civilizations” - and yanks it away from the usual map of religions and empires. The pivot matters. By denying the Islam-versus-the-West binary, she refuses the emotional script that makes collective blame feel natural and policy overreaction feel righteous. Then she replaces it with a moral axis that flatters her preferred coalition: “reason” as the modern, liberal self-image; “superstition” as the shame label for whatever she’s opposing.

That word choice is doing tactical work. “Reason” sounds neutral, universal, almost scientific; it suggests her side isn’t a tribe at all, just reality. “Superstition,” by contrast, doesn’t merely say “wrong” - it implies childishness, fear, a refusal to grow up. The subtext is that the real enemy isn’t a faith community but a mindset: fundamentalism, conspiracy thinking, magical thinking, the politics of offense and purity that can attach itself to any tradition. She’s also quietly policing her own camp: if you respond to terrorism or religious extremism by demonizing Muslims, you’ve joined the superstitious side, trading analysis for myth.

Contextually, this reads like post-9/11 (and post-Iraq) argumentation aimed at the Huntington thesis and its media afterlife. It’s journalism as counter-mobilization: an attempt to keep public anger from hardening into civilizational narrative, and to insist the fight is internal to every society - between secular, evidence-based pluralism and the seductions of certainty. The provocation is that it asks readers to locate the battleground not “over there,” but in their own reflexes.