There has been conflict between Islam and the West for hundreds of years, but relations between the two cultures have only seemed to have grown worse in the last couple of decades, due to Western interference pillaging and Islam extremism. The West is often seen as arrogant whereas Islam can be seen as Intolerant. Is the world big enough for both Islam and the West?
"The Clash of Civilisations"
There was huge controversy when Samuel Huntington published his "The clash of Civilisations?" essay in the journal of foreign affairs in 1993. This essayed argued that future conflicts would be caused by differences in civilisations. The dominance of western civilisation is not because of it's inherent superiority , but because of its economic and military dominance. In the 1996 book "The Clash of Civilisations and the remaking of world order, Huntington noted that the USA has double standards when it comes to preventing the expansion of nuclear weapons for Iraq or Iran yet allowing Israel to become nuclear, and when promoting Democracy, which they do, unless it brings political enemies to power, such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip. These, together with the feeling of western superiority would result in a clash of civilisations with either the Chinese or Islam.
Professor Huntington believes that cultural differences matter. He argues that they are more important than politics and economics, both of which are a product of culture. The importance of culture lies in philosophical thought but the features of culture are there for all to see. How people identify themselves is through their ancestry, language, history, values, customs and institutions. These cultural features are the building blocks for communities and ultimately civilisations. He describes his thesis as an articulation of evolutionary development that can be observed during the cold war and what the world can expect in the post cold war.
The actual "clash" of civilisations is may be a popular subject to talk about, but Huntington regards civilisations as not just a threat to peace but the basis of the new world order. He notes that in the early twentieth century there was one dominant civilisation called "western culture", other cultures, deemed extreme by the west, challenged its dominance, most notably Communism from the latter half of the century. When the cold war ended, the world could be dominated by up to nine different civilisations: Western, Orthodox, Latin American, Japanese, Sinic, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic or African. Power is being transformed globally and this is altering the balance of power. In particular China is an emerging superpower along with India, Russia and Japan, whom have all acquired global influence, notably through economic power. The power of the west has also been transformed by the emergence of another global power, the European Union, although the USA still holds the majority of power in the west. In terms of cultural values both Europe and America reinforce on another's world standing so that western culture still remains the most powerful civilisation. Nevertheless, with potentially five global powers and six or seven major civilisations alongside the western powers, the world has changed.
Huntington warned the USA against the error of trying to transform its power base by exporting western culture in a vain attempt to be universal culture. he argued tat it is a grave misunderstanding of the deep and unique culture differences between civilisations and will result in "a global war of civilisations".
Huntington's thesis is still a traditional analysis of power. Whereas in the cold war the global powers led ideological power blocs view the global powers would lead respective civilisations. The world would therefore, be on stronger foundations: culture is natural and essential to every community in defining who they are, it unites people, whereas ideology artificially divides cultures. They are grand theories that try to explain everything and end up weakening rather than accommodating cultural differences. In this optimistic sense a "remaking of the world order" is going along cultural lines. Huntington argued that the future is for world leaders to recognise and accept "the multi-civilised character of global politics.
Conflict within individual Civilisations
Civilisations however have their fault lines. In defining their identities, communities cannot define
themselves without reference to different cultures. We define ourselves by who we are not, notes Huntington. nevertheless implied in this cultural defining process are differences that civilisations pick up about others and are perceived to be threats to them, be it religion, custom or even symbols. Huntington does not deny that there will be wars within civilisations but argues that the wars between civilisations are far more serious for they have the potential to escalate into larger wars. It is this pessimistic view of a clash of civilisations that has come to dominate the minds of political observers in the post 9/11 era.
The post 9/11 World order
The great appeal and relevance of Huntington's thesis post 9/11, is the context or paradigm of his political analysis on the world. A paradigm is a theoretical model that can describe and offer explanations about the world politics of today in a simple and intellectually refined manner. The appeal of its simplicity is that it provides a mind map on which commenters can view and make sense of the world. The dominant cold war paradigm picturing a bi-polar world based on ideological conflict is no longer relevant. A new paradigm is needed to replace the old one. Four other post-cold war paradigms were rejected by Huntington, not because they were irrelevant but because they were to simplistic. One model, the triumph of liberal democracy as the global system of governance, is for Huntington to western centric. The simple notion that the east-west world has now been replaced by a north-south world of rich and poor states is also rejected. He argues that in this model the latter have no effective means to create conflict situations, so global security questions don't arise, and that many states in the south are integrating into the developing world. The realist paradigm that states will only act in world politics when their interests are at stake is fir Huntington a relevant model but is too focussed on the state and excludes other factors. The modern state is relinquishing some of its key functions to intergovernmental organisations and regional bodies and is also in retreat in controlling functions to intergovernmental organisations and regional bodies and is also in retreat in controlling commercial and financial sectors to a more international system. Lastly, he considered the chaos theory which stated that the cold war security certainties brought about by superpower tensions are over, weak states propped-up by the bi-polar will fail and ethnic and religious group tensions supressed during the old war will erupt. There will chaos in the form of ethnic cleansing, terrorism, organised crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Huntington argued that the chaos theory comes across as highly relevant because it has journalistic approach to world events but there is no theoretical substance behind it.
The paradigm offered by Huntington is a world of inter-civilisation conflict. Western civilisation dominates and will come into conflict with two other rising civilisations. Islam and China are the "challenger" civilisations competing for superiority and the leading position occupied by the west. There will, he argued be other inter-civilisation conflicts especially between Orthodox, Hindu, African and Western but they will be more local and mainly about boarder disputes but nothing on the scale of what the challenger civilisations will provide. As Huntington argued "The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from western arrogance, Islamic intolerance and Sino assertiveness". The arrogance of the west is to assume that with cold war victory, democracy has triumphed and the whole world should convert to democracy. Led by the USA whose political culture is to be "a missionary state", democracy should be exported as a universal truth about political life. Liberalism, Capitalism, Constitutionalism and legalism are the universal values. All governments across the world will eventually embrace these values as self-evident truths. For Huntington this is cultural anarchy: "What is universalism to the West is imperialism to the rest". He predicted that with such arrogance the new age will be "the West versus the rest".
The underlying context of this paradigm is the inevitable decline of western civilisation in relation to other civilisations.
The War on Terror
Huntington sometimes refers to the "clash" of civilisations as one inevitable cultural difference, on other occasions the clash is taken to mean competitive cultural superiorities, but, and more prominently, on other occasions he describes a clash as meaning conventional conflict between civilisations. However the "war on terror" is far from conventional. The Islamist movements are non-state actors, they have no military armies: training is restricted to "boot camps" and bomb making manuals, and terrorist operate in small cells around the world. Furthermore their wealth is comparatively limited: they flourish in poor or failing states and it is from these environments that security questions are raised. Indeed poverty is considered a recruitment ground for terrorists. The motivation behind Islamists is in fact Ideological. Their violent attacks are as much against moderate Muslim countries as they are against western powers that intervene in their lands. The Islamists try to exploit the historical difference between Muslim sects on ideological grounds. Their Ideological vision to restore the 7th Century Caliphate. Furthermore the mantra of these extremists is that any Muslim who does not share their fundamentalist views can't be a "proper" Muslim. "The war on terror" is less about the west versus the rest but Islamists versus the rest.
The potential for conflict between civilisations is also being eroded by globalization: the attractive power of market economics joins civilisations to a common venture. Economic globalization is supported by all mainstream cultures because of the benefits it can bring. It is the feature of the present age that can transform current views about world politics.
To Conclude
Any paradigm for today must include an analysis of globalization and terrorism, a world of transformations and fundamentalism, a world of new types of power ideologies coming to the fore, which cannot be reduced to inter-civilisation conflicts.
Significantly, the paradigm offered by Huntington, however, rests on its predictive value. "The Clash of civilisations" predicts the demise of western civilisation, the hostile rise of other civilisations and the alienation between civilisations where there is no accommodation of cultural norms. Civilisation is of course steeped in history and Huntington's thesis clarifies this history, and at great length, but wrongly assumes it has some predictive value.
