Since the time of Edward Said and Talal Asad, if not before, we have known that the Western view of ‘the Orient’ – from the Near East to Japan – is an intellectual and cultural construct. In addition, the ‘Christian occident’ has been used, and is still used, as a politically charged term. Analogous to ‘Orientalism’, ‘Occidentalism’ has become the focus of considerable debate. The geopolitical consequences of this confrontation seem obvious and culminate in Samuel Huntington's thesis of a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ based on essentialised religious differences. But the concepts of ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are not, and have never been, homogenous. Nor have they been formed, nor do they continue to evolve, without mutual interaction. The global interdependence we witness today – often labelled ‘globalisation’ – is nothing new and in actual fact has its origin in the formative phases of the major cultural and religious traditions.