The biggest problem with teleological history is that it leads to sloppy thinking. It causes the historian to torture the facts as he has them so that they will fit into the Procrustean bed of the March of History that he is thinking of. From the WWII until very recently, the story of anti-Semitism was often looked to be a teleological narrative culminating in the Holocaust. This approach is changing, especially among medievalists/early modern historians who are now working to make the distinction between religiously motivated anti-Judaism and racially motivated anti-Semitism. Such a distinction may seem like a trifling point, but it is in fact quite significant. To the anti-Semite, the Jew is the "eternal Jew" forever an alien parasite that can never be assimilated. The religiously motivated anti-Jewish polemic, though, allows the Jew to convert and be accepted into the Church/ummah.

The two modes of thought came into direct contact in several parts of Europe during WWII, moste especially when the extreme right wing Catholic government of Slovakia forced its Jews to accept Baptism, but then reacted in horror when the Nazi government ordered them killed anyway. Religious anti-Judaism was dominant prior to the Enlightenment, while racial anti-Judaism didn't pick up steam until the 19th century.

I should of course point out that, the further down from the intelligentsia that the two ideas percolate, the less daylight one sees in between positions. Even so, the distinction is still fairly significant, and even when Catholic Spain went after Jewish converts, it did so because the converts were suspected of not having fully converted.

For this reason, it sets my teeth on edge whenever I hear about "anti-Semitism in the Islamic world." The feelings that the Islamic world has towards the Jewish state, while to some degree nationalistic have, for at least a generation, been primarily religious. Indeed, over the course of the religious revival underway in the Islamic world, the Palestinian issue has become more and more a religious issue, so that one can watch the ideology of the anti-Israel terrorist groups gradually change over the decades.

My point? Well, it is primarily that even a HAMAS or Hizbollah member would accept Ariel Sharon as a fellow believer if he were to acknowledge his error and convert to Islam, though they might of course be suspicion that his conversion was not sincere. It is fairly important that Westerners understand what they are dealing with, since attempting to treat religious anti-Judaism as racist anti-Semitism leads to the wrong approach being taken. Moreover, sloppy terminology regarding such an issue also leads to sloppy thinking.

I have a tendency to harp on this point, but it is an important one. When irreligious people are trying to understand religious people, they ought to at least make an effort to understand the religious people on their own terms rather than trying to cram them into our pre-held templates.

Much of the Middle East, Africa, and parts of South America are strongly religious. And while it is often true that religious and secular concerns overlap, they very often do not. If the secular west is going to have any hope in dealing with those parts of the rest of the world that are strongly religious, its intelligentsia is going to have to actually have a clue as to what is going on.