"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.

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.