As most people then appreciated, Cahill might have been laying it on a bit thick, but few minded and who . . . other than columnists and cultural elites nervous about where all this Celtic Tiger business might leave them in the food chain . . .would begrudge the long-downtrodden Paddies their moment in history's sun?

Ten years later and it's now an article of faith in Dublin that the Irish saved civilisation after the fall of Rome. They also were first to the moon and narrowly beat Al Gore to invent the internet. There is an article in the Irish constitution guaranteeing everyone the right to be on at least one reality TV show before hitting 30 and another guaranteeing each the right to own three homes, one in a country where they do not speak the language, a share in a London office tower and an SUV. Also, we consistently produce homegrown international football talent, are superb dancers, generous lovers and can hold our drink on a Saturday night.

For the purposes of this column, let's stipulate that everything above is true, bar one . . . that the Irish saved civilisation.

It's a serious point because it's not a uniquely Irish delusion. It's one that featured this week around Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Turkey. Benedict, you may recall, got into hot water earlier this year by quoting a medieval text that portrayed Islam as a bloodthirsty religion whose supporters are prone to violence.

Until this week, I haven't been a fan of Benedict . . . what with his heading-up the crowd formerly known as The Inquisition and all . . . but he's impressed with this performance and obvious desire (for whatever motive) to engage the Muslim world.

Not with pandering claptrap about, 'ooh, isn't it terrible what we Christian imperialists did to you lot', but in a serious, critical dialogue that treats the Turks (and presumably other peoples he'll visit) like rational adults. Visiting the Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine church that Muslim imperialists claimed for themselves after conquering a Christian empire at Constantinople, sort of made the point about history's complexities.

His visit has been painted as the peaceful side of a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam. This misses two key points.

First, the West as we understand it could not exist without Islam. While Europe devoured itself in centuries of backwards feudalism, economic malaise and theocratic control, the Arab world was buzzing with wealth, power, technology and worldly intellectual rigour.

Muslims ruled the Mediterranean, brought advanced medicine to Muslim Spain. Arab scribes kept alive texts just as sacred to the Western canon as the Bible . . . those containing the thoughts of the philosophers of Greece and Rome. It was from Arab sources that those texts made their way to Thomas Aquinas, and sparked the reinvention of the West.

Second, the very identification of the West with Christendom is only a notion. As Danish historian David Gress sets out beautifully in From Plato to Nato: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents, the idea of 'the West' has been incredibly pliable over the past 3,000 years. And powerful; whoever owns the idea has owned the future.

(Gress, it should be noted, works for the newspaper that published the inflammatory cartoons of Muhammad, and he may disagree with what I'm about to write. ) Benedict began his trip by arguing for Turkish accession to the EU. He's right to do so for a number of reasons, but one above all: the West does not end at the Bosporous; its greater cultural area is centred on the Mediterranean and ends at the Ganges. It can grant space to faith without giving primacy to one in particular and without sacrificing reason as its mode of discourse.

The societies and cultures within this space are impossible to imagine without each other. The supposed clash of civilisations is actually, I would argue, the last civil war of the Greater West. Whether civilisation itself will survive is another question.

Thank God the Irish are here if it needs saving again.