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.
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