"Not Without my Daughter" is an upsetting outcome of Huntington's False theory.

As a continuation of my post about “Clash of Civilizations,” I wanted to show how such a strict divide between US and THEM that Samuel Huntignton creates is crucially wrongful. Further, it overemphasizes essentialism of cultural differences that won’t under any circumstances allow western and eastern/oriental people to agree and cooperate. “Not Without My Daughter” is a great example of the horrific duality of Huntington’s theory. It is a movie made by director Brian Gilbert, based on a true storybook written by Betty Mahmoody. The book is a story of American woman Betty Mahmoody, who married an Iranian doctor, Saed Mahmoody, who lived in America for more than ten years. They had a wonderful daughter Mohtab (moon shine from Iranian translation) and had lived in a happy marriage for seven years, until Moody (name that Betty called Saed) asked them to travel to Iran to visit his relatives, where the whole story tragic story begins. The movie was released in 1990 and immediately got many negative critic reviews, as offensive, overly exaggerated and negatively portraying Iranian culture, people and country.

     The movie is based on a book, where Betty Mahmoody is describing her life story when she was asked by her husband to visit his relatives in Iran for two weeks. However, when they arrived to Iran Moody decided to stay in Iran, because of feeling guilty leaving his country during difficult time of Iranian Revolution. He felt it was his duty as a doctor to stay and to help his people, although Betty didn't want to stay in Iran. Moody started to abuse his wife to make her to submit and became very violent, as book describes. Betty decided to leave, but Iranian laws wouldn't let Mahtob (their daughter) to leave with her; therefore, she decided to plan an escape with her daughter. After 18 months spent in Iran, Betty finally escaped with Mahtob, and neither Betty nor Mahtob saw Moody again.

     The story of Betty and Mahtob Mahmoody with out any doubts is a tragic story, but the way the movie portrays Moody, his family and the country as whole, gives an awful expression of mentally degraded and cruel society of Iran. Very understandable that Betty went through many painful situations, both physical and psychological, but she was not the only member of the family that was portrayed to be abused by other members with viciousness and cruelty. Absurdly, all the members of Moody’s family were constantly arguing with each other, Moody, as well as Betty. More over they yell, scream, disrespect and abuse each other on the day-to-day basis. Such portrayal makes one question if family that was long waiting for Moody to return, would they be so angry and violent even towards him and each other in front of him. Literally, every family scene that was shown in the movie was a scene of fights or arguments, and so violent that family members reminded me of some kind of devils, with their ugly and angry facial expressions and scary voices. For a person that has no idea about Iranian culture, or more than that, Islamic culture, this would be an exact kind of image and message that they straight-forwardly receive.

       The Iranian Revolution was a difficult time in the country, but in the movie this time is overly exaggerated and blown out of its proportions. As a curious person, after watching this movie, I read decent amount of literature and interviewed couple of my Iranian friends, who lived at that period of time in Iran. Iranian Revolution happened in 1979 and by that time it was very developed and modern country, you can call it “westernized” if you want. In the movie armed patrols were on every corner of Teheran streets, which is not true based on the reality. There were no women running around the streets with guns in their hands. It's true that women weren't allowed to be uncovered outside of their homes, but they weren't required to wear headscarves at home as it was shown in the movie. All these facts juxtapose the reality, which leaves a totally different expression to American people about Iranian culture.

      The media has a great impact on the image of the Islam World for American society. Such movies as “Not Without My Daughter,” portray Islam countries as “...backward and primitive country.” Moreover, for an American director Brian Gilbert, who isn't a scholar or an expert of Islam World, or has no or very limited knowledge of that region and its cultures it was too irresponsible to make this kind movie with such a strong message. Gilbert overemphasized his abilities, because he couldn't express Iran and it's culture as it is. However, it's been a story of a cruel country with people who don't know anything better than abuse.

Oppressed Majority

I never knew how the world would've looked like if men lived in women's world. This is an absolutely astonishing short film, that made me feel so sorry and sad for all the men. But then I realized, its not them its us!!!!!

Huntington says FEAR the differences, I say Embrace Them with all your Heart !!!

         The American political scientist Samuel Huntington provoked a huge academic debate when in 1993 he presented the article ”The Clash of Civilizations” in the magazine Foreign Affairs. In this article he presented a theory of the geopolitical situation after the Cold War. His main thesis was that the world’s conflicts were no longer just between ideologies, but between civilizations, where different cultural and religious identities are the main factors in creating cooperation or conflict. Huntington fears that the self-assertion and the cooperation between the non-Western “civilizations,” especially the Islamic and the Sinic, would be at the expense of the Western “civilization.” “The people of the West must hang together,” was his message when a question became of how to meet the new “threat.” While describing the tense relationship and clash between “Western Civilizations” and “Islamic Civilizations,” Huntington misleads readers with his oversimplified determination of “civilizations” and purposefully carries very negative presentation of Islamic religion and culture of Muslim countries.

             First of all, Huntington identified eight major civilizations — Indian, Chinese, Asian, Islamic, Western etc. — and emphasized that instead of converging towards universal liberalism globally, human consciousness within these civilizations is underlying; people are becoming increasingly parochial and conscious of their cultural, religious or civilizational values and differences. The concept of “civilization” is an abstract theoretical construction that simplifies reality in an almost dangerous way. It looks like it is an almost impossible task to give a sustainable objective basis for concepts of civilizations, no matter whether one uses a universalistic or pluralistic approach. Huntington’s starting-point for splitting the world into eight big cultures seems to be very questionable.

         The clash of civilizations thesis has attracted considerable amount of criticism on the basis of its language of 'us' and 'them' or its embedded epistemology of 'othering'. The critics generally hold that Huntington's understanding of Islam-West relations is fundamentally based upon orientalist scholarship of Islam, in which Islam is perceived as a problem and even a threat to the West. Edward Said, a well-known critic of orientalism, contends that Huntington's thesis has orientalist backdrop, hence it always privileges the West and ignores the other (Islam). For Said, this approach is less likely to lead any critical understanding of 'other' but it only feeds self-pride. He also argues that there is a 'clash of ignorance' rather than 'clash of civilizations'. On the other hand, Manochehr Dorraj argues that the clash thesis reifies, distorts, and de-humanizes the Muslims. Finally, the critics argue that perceiving the 'other' as a 'threat' instead of a 'challenge', leads to 'siege mentality', which originate from 'Western hubris'. 

           After thinking critically, you would think what can motivate Huntington to write such a piece, that makes people realize that war is ok, and it's even natural. Moreover, that different “civilizations” were clashing for centuries, because of different ideologies, and now time has come for war of religious views. The motivation behind generating such ‘official’ mythology, by the US elite, and the multiple think tanks that push their agenda, is primarily ‘prepping’ the domestic public for massive funds and manpower. In other words, legitimation is achieved by generating an ‘us versus them’ climate of fear and paranoia by scaring “the hell out of the American people.” We should note at this point that the agenda of the US elite is different to that of the masses in the US, most of whom are politically quite apathetic and are busy earning a living or chasing a dream that most never attain. The point is that such frightening of a generation by the US elite is for ulterior motives and not for the sake of any benefit to the American people. As C. Wright Mills explained in his book, The Power Elite, in the 1950s and as William Domhoff has been empirically verifying almost every decade since then, these US elite have a social profile and a lifestyle very different to the profile of mainstream America, and their sense of community is such that they consider themselves ‘separate’ and ‘superior’ from the rest of society over which they rule. 

              This ‘prepping’ of the public so that it considers elite agenda to be in their best interest, with the accompanying language of fear and the pseudo-scholarship that legitimizes it, is necessary for conducting wars because the manpower as well as the funding for it is provided by the masses. They are also the ones who do the fighting but ironically never take part in the decision to go to war. The second and lesser reason for such a thesis like the “Clash of Civilizations,” is for altering the agenda of the rest of the world, particularly the underdeveloped part of the world, away from domestic issues towards conducting America’s wars. The ‘you are with us or with the enemy’ mentality, which is the privilege that the rest of the world grants the US based on its position in the global order, inevitably achieves that end. 

                 Huntington in his describing of Islam represents it as a violent, war centered, “boarding with blood” religion. One should start thinking of “who speaks for Islam?” in the World and whether Islam is a political religion, as well as considering how Islam is perceived by the others. There was a disagreement among the Muslim participants and panelists as to whether Islam is a faith to be defined by the individual according to his reading of the sacred texts, or whether Islam is rather a way of life that cannot be separated from a government. A consensus was established that there is a difference between who should speak for Islam and who does speak for Islam. Osama Bin Laden, for example, did not have the support of most Muslims, and yet he tried to claim the authority to speak for the Muslim world, which he sometimes was granted—at least in the mind of the others. The discussion of Western perceptions restated that Islam is not a monolith and that the West should develop a more complex understanding of the Islamic world. There was no such agreement, however, when it came to whether the West is indeed “hated” by the Muslim world and, if so, why. Likewise, conflicting opinions emerged as to whether the West’s perceptions of Islam constitute discrimination and vilification, or whether these attitudes and fears are driven (or justified) by a recent history of Americans being killed by people claiming Islam as their motivation. 

               Generally speaking one can say that Huntington with his hypothesis “the clash of civilization” has come up with an important contribution to the theoretical discussion about the concept of civilization and to the discussion about the driving forces behind today’s more complex geopolitical situation. But his emphasize on cultural dividing lines as the decisive factors behind conflict and cooperation seems to be over exaggerated, and also potentially dangerous. Even though he replaces the importance of ideology with the importance of culture, his way of thinking is still connected to the spirit of the Cold War: “the West against the rest”.

                                         Works Cited:

“The Clash of Civilizations,” by Samuel P. Huntigton,Foreign Affairs Summer 1993.

“ The Clash of Ignorance,” by Edward Said.The Nation, October 22, 2001.

“Why Samuel Huntington’s “Clash Of Civilizations” IsInadequate,” by William Holland.

“The Power Elite,” by C.Wright Mills. Oxford Press. 1956.

Egyptian Revolution. An Inspiring, Heart Breaking and Life Changing Documentary.

Globalization. Blessing or Curse.

             With the spread of Internet and expansion of multinational corporations we are facing a new powerful notion such as globalization. It seems that globalization brought us so many more beautiful and promising opportunities, like studying abroad, traveling world wide, being able to acquire any kind of information from the Internet, and etc. However, globalization brought us some difficult challenges as well. For governments of many Muslim countries, westoxication became a big challenge that led to the Arab Spring. Also, for many developed countries the ability for businesses to outsource became another problem. One of the greatest examples of the dilemma that was caused by globalization is discussed in Robert Denemark’s Case study “ Globalization: France, Nazis, and the Internet.”

            Since Yahoo’s headquarters is in the United States, it represents standards and norms of the home country. United States is best known for its democracy, which is most prominently represented by capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, free market system and a freedom of speech. On the other hand, France has control over its markets, maintains limits of what people can say, and is heavily reliant on its neighbors with in the European Union. Here we already see what kind of differences and potential issues can possibly be in between France and Yahoo with its American values. In the Pew Case Study #282 “France, Nazis, and the Internet” by Robert Denemark, France is trying to sue Yahoo for auctioning Nazi memorabilia because  “[t]he French consider such symbols inappropriate in an enlightened society and an offense against the nation” (Denemark, 1).  Is it just French enlightened ethical reasons that make them afraid of any memories of Nazis or it is more likely to be just a sheer mask that covers a bigger and more problematic issues that French are afraid to admit even to themselves and their own nation? “Societies with conservative moral codes, closed political systems, and vulnerable economies may view such transparency as a threat,” says Robert D. and he is absolutely right in this case. Besides being destroyed and ruined by Nazis, France has a long history of being allied with them as well as strongly supporting neo-Nazi political parties that are against immigration and racial mixing. Now it’s clear that France is more afraid of its own people’s political stands than possible jeopardy of enlightened principles. It is also afraid that freedom of buying Nazi memorabilia can possibly spur further development and popularity of already existing neo-Nazi political parties. If I was a judge and had to make a decision in favor of France or Yahoo I would’ve done exactly the same thing as the US did when Yahoo came to it for help. I would let Yahoo to decide of whether or not it wants to stop auctioning the memorabilia and possibly loose one of his market places. I wouldn’t require Yahoo of taking the product off the site, because it’s not about Yahoo in this case, but it is about France and its internal problems. France has to be able to face its own issues and be able to solve them with in the country and by stopping Yahoo selling the memorabilia it will not prevent neo-Nazi parties from growing, but will only create a black market for such demands.

         In this case economic world of Yahoo collides with cultural and possibly political world of France. Yahoo is interested in selling these memorabilia because it brings it high profits. On the other hand, France is afraid of distribution of such product because their internal political as well as cultural “stability” can be disturbed by Nazi memorabilia that can stimulate growth of racist politico-cultural attitudes. It is not the first neither the last example where different worlds/spheres of our lives collide in the era of globalization. For example, high growing rates of globalization and multinational corporations have tremendously destructive impact on our environment and irreversible global warming. We happily enjoy new developments of high technological gadgets, widgets, etc. that make our life so much more comfortable. On the other hand, endless landfills, plastic and techno-industrial trash all contribute to our huge payment for our pleasures as a global warming. It is important to realize if someone’s new Iphone is worth his or her newly developed asthma, or if a dirt-cheap wireless Internet is worth the near future skyrocketing prices of water.

     Problems and benefits of globalization is a hot topic for debates in nowadays. It is difficult to figure out how to manage and regulate it, since our international system is still in the anarchic state with no world leader to control.

A Tale of Contemporary Philosopher King. Or Michael Ignatieff as a Great Public Intellectual and Failed Political leader.

     

It has always been a hot debate about who public intellectuals are, what their role in our society is, and if they are, already, going extinct, a rare type of human specimen. In his article The "Decline" of the Public Intellectual, Stephen Mack argues with John Donatich’s idea of America’s “headstrong individualism and the myth of self-reliance” that, according to Donatich, leads America to force their unique class of public intellectuals to go extinct. However, Mack argues that individualism and self-reliance are some of the basics of democracy and these are the qualities that give birth to a public intellectual to begin with. He raises the issue that it is more important to understand what public intellectuals ought to do instead of who they are and what class they belong to. To be a public intellectual, according to Mack, you have to be an active, critical citizen and an independent thinker. Moreover, public intellectuals must be able to question things that happen around him and basically has to be able to “keep the pot boiling.” As a support to Stephen Mack, Jean Bethke Elshtain claims, 

“that the public intellectual function is criticism. And if intellectuals are in a better position to perform that function it’s not because they are uniquely blessed with wisdom—and it’s certainly not because they are uniquely equipped to wield social or political power. It is only because learning the processes of criticism and practicing them with some regularity are requisites for intellectual employment. It’s what we do at our day jobs.” 

Both Mack and Elshtain are absolutely right, but it seems that a job of a public intellectual goes beyond just questioning and criticizing, and in order to make a bigger difference in this world you have to try to take actions, just like Michael Ignatieff did.

     One of the worldwide best-known public intellectuals who always raises questions about what is our role as a Western society in the rest of the world is Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff is a son of famous Canadian diplomat and prime minister aide, and the grand son of a generation of influential advisors in Imperial Russia. Politics, intellectualism and a global view of the world were in his blood. In 2005, Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine named Michael Ignatieff as one of the world’s 100 most famous and influential public intellectuals, which they defined as 

“[s]omeone who has shown distinction in their own field along with the ability to communicate ideas and influence debate outside of it.”

 It is not surprising that Ignatieff deserved such fame considering his successful, diverse and active career. After getting his BA in University of Toronto, being granted a MA in Cambridge, starting his Ph.D in University of Oxford, and completing it in Harvard University in 1976, he moved to the United Kingdom where his professional career as a writer, journalist and professor took off. During his successful career he taught at the world top universities like University of British Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and etc. His books like The Russian Album, Blood and Belonging, and a novel called Scar Tissue were honored, nominated, and won multiple prestigious prizes like Lionel Gilbert Prize, Booker Prize, etc. While in London, with help of his telegenic appearance and eloquence Ignatieff won praise from audiences as a personality on the BBC and wrote a column for the Observer as well as New York Times.

       In Ignatieff’s 1990s works one of the most famous and important topics was Yugoslavia, where over than 130,000 people died. It was a painful experience for Ignatieff to see that happen especially because of Western countries’ delay in intervention. As Jordan M.Smith writes in The Boston Globe 

“Amid an earlier generation of liberals that had seen American power misused in the terrible war in Vietnam, Ignatieff emerged as a leading voice among “liberal hawks,” arguing that Westerners could not leave Bosnians and Rwandans to die. He was an advocate for the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, citing them as necessary humanitarian ventures. He also helped formulate the doctrine that the international community bore a “Responsibility to Protect.” 

He wrote in 2003, 

“The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions—and Iraq may be one of them—when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.” 

His stand in support of modern liberal interventionism became one of the Ignatieff’s strongest ideas that simultaneously brought him triumph as a writer and academic and a tremendous loss as a future politician.

       In October 2004, three Canadian Liberals, “men in black” as Ignatieff calls them, showed up at Cambridge and offered him to come back to Canada and run for a leader of Canadian Liberal Party in order to eventually become a Prime Minister of Canada. It was a big surprise for everybody, including Ignatieff himself, because he couldn’t believe that his 

“political writing qualified [him] to become a politician”(The Boston Globe, Smith). 

It is not surprising that Ignatieff accepted this incredible offer because that meant that he could possibly achieve the all 

“intellectual’s ultimate dream: bringing ideas—in this case, interventionist ideas—into being in the real world of politics” (World Affairs, Smith). 

It seemed that Ignatieff was perfectly suited for this job, he had big ideas, and he knew theory of political world from inside and out, which is such a rare commodity for a politician in this day and age. Unfortunately, for Canadian Liberal Party and Michael Ignatieff it wasn’t all so easy. The world of politics has very different requirements for a successful politician than academia for a successful scholar.

“ When Michael Ignatieff resigned as leader of Canada’s Liberals at a press conference in Toronto on May 3rd, members of his team were seen at the back of the room in tears. They were grieving not just for their party—which the previous day had suffered the worst defeat in its history, coming a first-ever third place in the federal election, behind not only their Conservative Party tormentors but also the left-wing New Democrats. They were grieving even more for the death of a dream, the sad end of a six-year experiment that they had once believed would conclude with a unique man, Ignatieff himself, pulling the sword of political governance out of the stone of political theory and coming to power in Canada as a contemporary philosopher-king ” (World Affairs, Smith).

        Here we have a beautiful and sad example of extremely influential public intellectual, with impressive credentials and name recognition who tried to take his theory and thoughts and implement them in practice. However, reality of the academia is different from political reality. During his time in Congress, Ignatieff certainly was able to use his skillful academic background like 

“Maclean’s, Canada’s major newsweekly, labeled Ignatieff as the ‘best orator’ in Parliament for his ‘profound’ use of alliteration and flights of Ciceronian rhetoric. ‘Mr. Speaker, you can’t get development, diplomacy, and defense to work together in Kandahar if you’ve got muddle, misinformation, and mismanagement in Ottawa,’ he once said. ‘You can’t win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, if all they see are troops, tanks, and guns’ ”(World Affairs, Smith). 

As mentioned earlier, Michael Ignatieff had a very strong opinion regarding liberal interventionism and he didn’t try to hide it in the politics either. He freely spoke his opinion on Israeli Palestinian relations and that did not improve his image in political arena. Frankly it did the opposite. 

“The things prized in academia—independence of thought, bold ideas, speaking out—are not the things that necessarily make a good politician,” says Joseph Nye, a professor at the Kennedy School (The Boston Globe, Smith). 

Speaking just the truth didn’t do the job for Ignatieff, he realized that politicians, unlike public intellectuals, said what they had to say when they needed to. Unfortunate for Ignatieff’s political career while 

“he was the fox in many things, he was the hedgehog in one: he was above all an acute political observer and theorist who became particularly concerned with the reluctance of rich, secure states to use force to save lives” (World Affairs, Smith). 

Conservatives, as well as many Liberals and public voters didn’t support such a straight-forward attitude of Ignatieff and as Jane Taber writes in her essay 

“[b]eing an intellectual doesn't always make a good politician either, ‘because as an intellectual you are seeking truth and as a politician you are seeking power and those lines are still crossed.”

       It was even more important for Canadian people, and I agree with them, that Michael Ignatieff was out of Canada for about 30 years traveling and working around the world and now he was back trying to win over people’s hearts, trust and votes. In order to defend himself and prove his devotion and commitment to Canada and its people Ignatieff said that 

“[l]oving a country is an act of imagination,” a line which caused one reviewer to quip, ‘I’m not even sure what it means, but you wouldn’t write that if you were really secretly a Harvard professor at heart. Right?’ Ignatieff never overcame the impression that he was in the country only insofar as he could profit from it. He suffered from the fact that intellectuals do insincerity much more clumsily than do ‘natural’ politicians (World Affairs, Smith). 

Ignatieff admits 

“ ‘I’ve spent my life as a writer, but you have no idea of the effect of words until you become a politician,’ he told The New Yorker with a sense of wonder. ‘One word or participle in the wrong place and you can spend weeks apologizing and explaining’” (World Affairs, Smith). 

While he had a great intellectualism, profound knowledge and a perfect plan of action for Canada in the world arena, he didn’t know what it takes to become a wise, sharp, power hungry politician.

            It seems that my thesis, explained above, has been crushed on the example of Michael Ignatieff’s loss. You may also think that a public intellectual after he finds his niche should stay there and continue what he is best at, i.e. criticizing others, “keep the pot boiling,” and try not to repeat Ignatieff’s mistake, you can even call it failure. However, it takes a lot of bravery and courage, some may call it arrogance, to take such action. Moreover, it is honorable enough to take a chance, to make a step and try and do something instead of beating yourself up for the rest of your life for letting an opportunity slip by, never having take your chance to make your theory in a reality. Even more honorable is Ignatieff’s humble acceptance of his mistakes 

“I entered politics with a lot of baggage and I paid full freight for it, but it’s better to have paid up than to have lived a defensive life,” he writes in “Fire and Ashes.” “A defensive life is not a life fully lived” (The Boston Globe, Smith).  

As a support to my call for actions from public intellectuals, Jordan Smith says 

“[i]t may be difficult for philosophers to become kings, but just by being in the royal palace they are able to have some influence”(World Affairs, Smith). 

We should treat Ignatieff’s experience as a good example for other public intellectuals that try themselves in the world of politics. These intellectuals should make sure that they are up to this type of job, pressure that comes with it, and other under water stones that may not seem obvious before. Finally, on their tough journey to politics, public intellectuals should keep in mind very powerful words of Margaret Wente that she wrote in her essay 

“The confessions of Michael Ignatieff, ” “[l]ike a flawed Greek hero, Mr. Ignatieff believes that his greatest sin was hubris - which, in case you have to look it up, is ambition combined with pride and ignorance.”

                          

                                              Works cited

Mack, Stephen. "The "Decline" of the Public Intellectual." Web log post. The New Democratic Review. N.p., 15 Jan. 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2014. <http://www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2014/01/the_decline_of_10.html>.

Herman, David. "Thinking globally." Prospect (2005). Web. 1 Feb. 2014. <http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/thinkingglobally/#.Uu3wM3ddWYk>.

Smith, Jordan M. "Iggy Pops: The Michael Ignatieff Experiment." World Affairs (2011): 25 pars. Web. 1 Feb. 2014. <http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/iggy-pops-michael-ignatieff-experiment>

Smith, Jordan M. "Michael Ignatieff, the intellectual who wanted to be a politician." The Boston Globe (2013). Web. 1 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/11/17/michael-ignatieff-intellectual-who-wanted-politician/c5XKjVRISmnmX3NFHpJjAK/story.html>.

Taber, Jane. "Newman rewrites Ignatieff's history." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada] 28 May 2011: A17. Biography in Context. Web. 1 Feb. 2014.

Wente, Margaret. "The confessions of Michael Ignatieff." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada] 26 Sept. 2013: A15. Biography in Context. Web. 1 Feb. 2014.