“The fundamental clash, according to Huntington, will be between the West on one side and the Sinic and Islamic civilisation on the other. The conflict along the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilisations has been going on for 1300 years.”
The fundamental clash, according to Huntington, will be between the West on one side and the Sinic and the Islamic civilisations on the other. The conflict along the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilisations has been going on for 1300 years. There are various factors that have contributed to intensifying the Islam-West conflict in the late 20th century.
As the cold war was drawing to an end, various intellectuals had undertaken the task of explaining and predicting post-cold war global politics. Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington were such eminent scholars. Fukuyama wrote his thesis, End of History, declaring the triumph of the ideology of liberal democracy for ever. According to him, now the war of ideologies is over and there is no rival ideology of liberal democracy. His argument becomes susceptible to criticism today when the whole Western world is at war with the ideology of 'terrorism'.
Four years later in 1993, Samuel P. Huntington wrote his article, 'The clash of civilizations’ in the magazine Foreign Affairs. It was the most reputed and thought-provoking piece of writing published in that distinguished magazine since George Kennan's article, ‘The sources of Soviet conduct’, published in July 1947. Huntington later on elaborated those very arguments in his book titled, ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’
To a very large degree, the major civilisations in human history have been closely identified with the world's greatest religions and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon and the subcontinent.
Huntington observes that for a century and a half following the nailing down of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, conflicts used to occur largely among princes and these conflicts led to the creation of nation states. After the French Revolution, the principal lines of conflict shifted between nations rather than princes. The end of this 19th century pattern coincides with the end of the First World War. Then in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the conflict of nation states yielded to the conflict of ideologies. Since the demise of the communist ideology, the configuration of global politics along cultural lines is underway. Huntington says, "In the 20th century, the relations among civilizations have thus moved from a phase dominated by the unidirectional impact of one civilization on all others to one of intense, sustained and multi-directional interactions among all civilizations." Huntington argues that his reconfiguration of politics at the global level would end up in a clash among civilisations. He contends that local politics is the politics of ethnicity, global politics is the politics of civilisation and the rivalry of superpower is replaced by the clash of civilisations.
According to Huntington, a civilisation is a cultural entity. Civilisation and culture both refer to the overall way of life of a people and a civilisation is a culture writ large. Huntington designates religion to be the most important of all the objective elements that define a civilisation. To a very large degree, the major civilisations in human history have been closely identified with the world's greatest religions and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon and the subcontinent. Huntington divides civilizations into seven major categories. These are the Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Western, Latin American and African (possibly). Some analysts do not recognize the Japanese and African civilisations as distinct civilisations.
Huntington also argues that the widespread Western belief in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and that continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington sees the West as reluctant to accept this because it built the international system, wrote its laws, and gave it substance in the form of the United Nations.
Huntington identifies a major shift of economic, military, and political power from the West to the other civilizations of the world, most significantly to what he identifies as the two "challenger civilizations", Sinic and Islam.
In Huntington's view, East Asian Sinic civilization is culturally asserting itself and its values relative to the West due to its rapid economic growth. Specifically, he believes that China's goals are to reassert itself as the regional hegemon, and that other countries in the region will 'bandwagon' with China due to the history of hierarchical command structures implicit in the Confucian Sinic civilization, as opposed to the individualism and pluralism valued in the West.
In other words, regional powers such as the two Koreas and Vietnam will acquiesce to Chinese demands and become more supportive of China rather than attempting to oppose it. Huntington therefore believes that the rise of China poses one of the most significant problems and the most powerful long-term threat to the West, as Chinese cultural assertion clashes with the American desire for the lack of a regional hegemony in East Asia.
Huntington argues that the Islamic civilization has experienced a massive population explosion which is fueling instability both on the borders of Islam and in its interior, where fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular. Manifestations of what he terms the "Islamic Resurgence" include the 1979 Iranian revolution and the first Gulf War.
Perhaps the most controversial statement Huntington made in the Foreign Affairs article was that "Islam has bloody borders". Huntington believes this to be a real consequence of several factors, including the previously mentioned Muslim youth bulge and population growth and Islamic proximity to many civilizations including Sinic, Orthodox, Western, and African.
Huntington sees Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing common conflicts with other civilizations, especially the West. Specifically, he identifies common Chinese and Islamic interests in the areas of weapons proliferation, human rights, and democracy that conflict with those of the West, and feels that these are areas in which the two civilizations will cooperate.
Russia, Japan, and India are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.
More recent factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism - that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values - that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists.
All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations. Along with Sinic-Western conflict, he believed, the Western-Islamic clash would represent the bloodiest conflicts of the early 21st century. Thus, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent events including the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been widely viewed as a vindication of the Clash theory.
The increasing interactions among people of different civilisations are intensifying civilisational consciousness and awareness of differences and commonalities amongst civilisations. According to Huntington, the enhancement of civilisational consciousness of people due to interactions among peoples of different civilisations, in turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching back deep into history.
Modernisation taking place in non-Western societies is leading towards cultural resurgence in those societies. Modernisation brings changes at the individual level, as well as societal level. At the societal level, it increases the economic, military and potential power while at the individual level it leads to alienation and identity crisis. Both of these changes contribute in bringing religious, as well as cultural resurgence. Huntington observes that spurred by modernisation, global politics is reconfigured along cultural lines. Peoples and countries with similar cultures are coming together and those with different cultures are coming apart.
The fundamental clash, according to Huntington, will be between the West on one side and the Sinic and Islamic civilisation on the other. The conflict along the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilisations has been going on for 1300 years. There are various factors that have contributed in intensifying the Islam-West conflict in the late 20th century.
(i) A surge in population growth in the Muslim countries led to unemployment in these societies and the youth became recruits to Islamist causes.
(ii) Islamic resurgence — an offshoot of 'back to the roots' phenomenon created culture consciousness among the Muslims more vigorously than at any other time in history.
(iii) The West is trying to universalise its values and impose them on other countries, including Muslims, while relaxing its economic and military muscles, but at the same time the West is not realising the decline in its capability to do so or increase in the power of other societies to resist any such attempt.
(iv) The demise of the Soviet Union has removed the common enemy of both Islam and the West.
But if we take a down-to-earth analysis of this theory, we will find various flaws that render its validity and application in the present era in doubt. First, Huntington said that the Islamic and the Sinic civilisations would coalesce together to counter the Western power as the allies and Stalin did against Hitler. But while comparing these two situations, he over-looked the basic point that the period of the Allies — Soviet pact was the period of 'ideologies' that today is over. Besides this, his contention of Islamic-Chinese cooperation negates his very thesis that now there is grouping in the world along cultural lines.
Second, M. K. Palat observes that the weakest point of 'clashing civilisations' theory is the confusion of civilisation as power bloc. The Islamic world as a civilisation may be discerned but not an Islamic power conglomerate in the manner of the West or China. Akbar S. Ahmed said, "The Muslim world seems to be torn between those who would shake heaven and earth to get a green card and become Americans and those who shake heaven and earth to damage and destroy Americans." So how can we envisage a world in which the whole Islamic world is pitched against the West?
Third, Huntington's argument is that the modernisation process is leading to Islamic revivalism and ultimately contributes to the process of civilisation consciousness. Thus, why were the relations between Islam and the West stormy in the 11th century when there was no modernisation process and thus culture consciousness (following Huntington's logic)?
Fourth, Huntington himself concedes the fact that there is no core state in the “Islamic world”. Thus, the absence of leadership will be followed by the absence of organisation to act in concert against the Western civilisation.
Fifth, many Muslim countries have slid into chaos and internal disturbance and a virtual civil war is going on in these countries between and among various factions, all of whom claim to be Muslims. These clashes within a civilisation undermine Huntington's thesis that people sharing same culture are coming together.
Sixth, according to Samuel, religion is the most significant of all the objective elements defining civilisation. But Bangladesh's secession from Pakistan was connected with language and politics and not religion.
Seventh, Amartya Sen in his essay titled, 'A world not neatly divided' attacks Huntington's theory by giving the example of movements that involve people without any distinction of culture, language or politics. He cites an example of anti-globalisation protestors whose movement include all the poor people across borders, regardless of territorial boundaries or any other barrier. Thus, shared poverty can also be a motive for people struggling together.
In a nutshell, Huntington's theory in which he has envisioned the clash among civilisations to be the climatic point of development of cultural fault lines is riddled with snags and loopholes and we cannot apply this theory in the emerging economically interdependent world. According to Sen, the division of humanity into impenetrable civilisational camps .
According to Huntington, a civilisation is a cultural entity. Civilisation and culture both refer to the overall way of life of a people and a civilisation is a culture writ large. Huntington designates religion to be the most important of all the objective elements that define a civilisation. To a very large degree, the major civilisations in human history have been closely identified with the world's greatest religions and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon and the subcontinent. Huntington divides civilizations into seven major categories. These are the Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Western, Latin American and African (possibly). Some analysts do not recognize the Japanese and African civilisations as distinct civilisations.
Huntington also argues that the widespread Western belief in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and that continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington sees the West as reluctant to accept this because it built the international system, wrote its laws, and gave it substance in the form of the United Nations.
Huntington identifies a major shift of economic, military, and political power from the West to the other civilizations of the world, most significantly to what he identifies as the two "challenger civilizations", Sinic and Islam.
In Huntington's view, East Asian Sinic civilization is culturally asserting itself and its values relative to the West due to its rapid economic growth. Specifically, he believes that China's goals are to reassert itself as the regional hegemon, and that other countries in the region will 'bandwagon' with China due to the history of hierarchical command structures implicit in the Confucian Sinic civilization, as opposed to the individualism and pluralism valued in the West.
In other words, regional powers such as the two Koreas and Vietnam will acquiesce to Chinese demands and become more supportive of China rather than attempting to oppose it. Huntington therefore believes that the rise of China poses one of the most significant problems and the most powerful long-term threat to the West, as Chinese cultural assertion clashes with the American desire for the lack of a regional hegemony in East Asia.
Huntington argues that the Islamic civilization has experienced a massive population explosion which is fueling instability both on the borders of Islam and in its interior, where fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular. Manifestations of what he terms the "Islamic Resurgence" include the 1979 Iranian revolution and the first Gulf War.
Perhaps the most controversial statement Huntington made in the Foreign Affairs article was that "Islam has bloody borders". Huntington believes this to be a real consequence of several factors, including the previously mentioned Muslim youth bulge and population growth and Islamic proximity to many civilizations including Sinic, Orthodox, Western, and African.
Huntington sees Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing common conflicts with other civilizations, especially the West. Specifically, he identifies common Chinese and Islamic interests in the areas of weapons proliferation, human rights, and democracy that conflict with those of the West, and feels that these are areas in which the two civilizations will cooperate.
Russia, Japan, and India are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.
More recent factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism - that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values - that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists.
All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations. Along with Sinic-Western conflict, he believed, the Western-Islamic clash would represent the bloodiest conflicts of the early 21st century. Thus, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent events including the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been widely viewed as a vindication of the Clash theory.
The increasing interactions among people of different civilisations are intensifying civilisational consciousness and awareness of differences and commonalities amongst civilisations. According to Huntington, the enhancement of civilisational consciousness of people due to interactions among peoples of different civilisations, in turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching back deep into history.
Modernisation taking place in non-Western societies is leading towards cultural resurgence in those societies. Modernisation brings changes at the individual level, as well as societal level. At the societal level, it increases the economic, military and potential power while at the individual level it leads to alienation and identity crisis. Both of these changes contribute in bringing religious, as well as cultural resurgence. Huntington observes that spurred by modernisation, global politics is reconfigured along cultural lines. Peoples and countries with similar cultures are coming together and those with different cultures are coming apart.
The fundamental clash, according to Huntington, will be between the West on one side and the Sinic and Islamic civilisation on the other. The conflict along the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilisations has been going on for 1300 years. There are various factors that have contributed in intensifying the Islam-West conflict in the late 20th century.
(i) A surge in population growth in the Muslim countries led to unemployment in these societies and the youth became recruits to Islamist causes.
(ii) Islamic resurgence — an offshoot of 'back to the roots' phenomenon created culture consciousness among the Muslims more vigorously than at any other time in history.
(iii) The West is trying to universalise its values and impose them on other countries, including Muslims, while relaxing its economic and military muscles, but at the same time the West is not realising the decline in its capability to do so or increase in the power of other societies to resist any such attempt.
(iv) The demise of the Soviet Union has removed the common enemy of both Islam and the West.
But if we take a down-to-earth analysis of this theory, we will find various flaws that render its validity and application in the present era in doubt. First, Huntington said that the Islamic and the Sinic civilisations would coalesce together to counter the Western power as the allies and Stalin did against Hitler. But while comparing these two situations, he over-looked the basic point that the period of the Allies — Soviet pact was the period of 'ideologies' that today is over. Besides this, his contention of Islamic-Chinese cooperation negates his very thesis that now there is grouping in the world along cultural lines.
Second, M. K. Palat observes that the weakest point of 'clashing civilisations' theory is the confusion of civilisation as power bloc. The Islamic world as a civilisation may be discerned but not an Islamic power conglomerate in the manner of the West or China. Akbar S. Ahmed said, "The Muslim world seems to be torn between those who would shake heaven and earth to get a green card and become Americans and those who shake heaven and earth to damage and destroy Americans." So how can we envisage a world in which the whole Islamic world is pitched against the West?
Third, Huntington's argument is that the modernisation process is leading to Islamic revivalism and ultimately contributes to the process of civilisation consciousness. Thus, why were the relations between Islam and the West stormy in the 11th century when there was no modernisation process and thus culture consciousness (following Huntington's logic)?
Fourth, Huntington himself concedes the fact that there is no core state in the “Islamic world”. Thus, the absence of leadership will be followed by the absence of organisation to act in concert against the Western civilisation.
Fifth, many Muslim countries have slid into chaos and internal disturbance and a virtual civil war is going on in these countries between and among various factions, all of whom claim to be Muslims. These clashes within a civilisation undermine Huntington's thesis that people sharing same culture are coming together.
Sixth, according to Samuel, religion is the most significant of all the objective elements defining civilisation. But Bangladesh's secession from Pakistan was connected with language and politics and not religion.
Seventh, Amartya Sen in his essay titled, 'A world not neatly divided' attacks Huntington's theory by giving the example of movements that involve people without any distinction of culture, language or politics. He cites an example of anti-globalisation protestors whose movement include all the poor people across borders, regardless of territorial boundaries or any other barrier. Thus, shared poverty can also be a motive for people struggling together.
In a nutshell, Huntington's theory in which he has envisioned the clash among civilisations to be the climatic point of development of cultural fault lines is riddled with snags and loopholes and we cannot apply this theory in the emerging economically interdependent world. According to Sen, the division of humanity into impenetrable civilisational camps .
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