Austin Clines article on Clash of Civilisations
<According to many world leaders, the world is at war; but according to those same leaders, it is not a war between the West and Islam, but is instead a war against terrorism. Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East, however, are either silent on the issue or proclaim that it is indeed a war by the West against Islam - and Muslims in the streets in cities across the Middle East seem to agree. Who is right, and why?
Anyone who reads Samuel P. Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order will realize that, despite the superficial assurances offered by Western leaders, this is indeed a conflict of civilizations. It is not simply a criminal prosecution against terrorists, but a fundamental clash between the democratic West and the Islamic East.
Some Westerners, including President Clinton, have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. The relations between Islam and Christianity, both Orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other's Other. The twentieth-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared with the continuing and deeply conflicted relation between Islam and Christianity. (Huntington, p. 209)
This is not to say, of course, that this is a conflict simply against the religion of Islam. Western leaders are correct in that they have not launched an armed conflict against a religion. But Muslim leaders are correct in that an attack is being made against a cultural, historical and political civilization centred around the religion of Islam.
As evident from the title of Huntington's book, this is a conflict between civilizations. As he and others define it, a "civilization" is a comprehensive cultural arena. Although religion is a fundamental defining force of culture, they are not identical. Thus, just because someone is a Muslim, does not automatically mean that they are a part of "Islamic Civilization," as described here.
Although Huntington's book is probably one of the most important works from the past decade on international politics, it is unlikely that his ideas would be very popular in today's ecumenical atmosphere. No one, it seems, wants to think that religion can reasonably form the basis of violent conflict. All "genuine" religion is supposed to be peace loving, right?
And this article, based almost entirely on Huntington's information, is likely to cause offence to some. But that offence will probably be due to a misunderstanding that I am writing to either condemn the religion of Islam or engage in uncritical support for the West. Neither is the case. This article is about the reasons why the conflict exists, and the reasons why religion, forming a basis to the culture of millions of people in the Middle East, has become involved in that conflict.
During the Cold War, the primary distinctions, which divided the world, were ideological and political: there was the capitalistic West, the communist nations, and those who decided to try and remain neutral. Today, however, ideological and political distinctions count for very little and the world is divided up along cultural lines. What this ends up meaning, in practice, is that the world ends up being divided along religious lines, because religion serves as an ancient carrier of cultural traditions and norms:
In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies. (Huntington p. 20)
Civilizations and civilizational groups obviously do not sit idly on the world stage: they continually seek to expand their influence and power. That normally occurs through violence, and the West has a long history of violent expansion. Although some in the West have tended to forget this, almost no one in the rest of the world has, and this in turn influences their own efforts at expansion and influence.
For many who are alive today, it has become normal to think about this happening via political conflicts and disagreements, but we must get used to the fact that that era is over:
The great political ideologies of the twentieth century include liberalism, socialism, anarchism, corporatism, Marxism, communism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism, fascism, and Christian democracy. They all share one thing in common: they are products of Western civilization. No other civilization has generated a significant political ideology. The West, however, has never generated a major religion. The great religions of the world are all products of non-Western civilizations and, in most cases, antedate Western civilization. As the world moves out of its Western phase, the ideologies which typified late Western civilization decline, and their place is taken by religions and other culturally based forms of identity and commitment. (Huntington pp. 53-54)
In the future, conflicts will fall along mostly along the cultural fault lines between "civilizations," which means that the divisions will be seen primarily as religious. Religion can be, after all, one of the most visually obvious and deeply held determinants of a person's culture. Just as people tend to "close ranks" along racial or ethnic lines, they also tend to do so along religious lines, and normally religious ties will claim greater allegiance than racial similarities.
Some might think that ideology can overcome cultural and religious ties by pointing to how the West has allies in its battles against criminal governments or groups in the Middle East. But it is easy to be fooled by what amounts to superficial alliances.
The first thing to note is how uneasy those alliances really are. In the West's military actions against the Taliban in Afghanistan, not a single Muslim government has come out to publicly support it, despite their own genuine concern about fundamentalist Muslim terrorists. They, after all, can have more to fear than the West.
Another fact, which points to the weakness of these alliances, is the almost total lack of support for them among the Muslim citizens of those nations. How many demonstrations do we see in opposition to the Taliban? None - most people regard even a criminal government to be preferable to the West, so long as that government is (or pretends to be) Islamic. Even when Western nations attacked Iraq in defence of Kuwait, a great many citizens of Muslim countries demonstrated in support of Saddam Hussein.
He may have been a cruel dictator, but he was still "one of them." This attitude relies upon the fundamental Islamic concept of ummah, a term, which signifies the belief that all Muslims are members of a single nation that transcends tribal, ethnic, racial and national divisions. This isn't simply loyalty to group identity - it is, instead, a bit closer to the Jewish notion of being part of a people chosen by God. As long as the concept of ummah plays a critical role, Western "allies" will never be as closely affiliated as Muslim neighbours.
American leaders allege that the Muslims involved in the quasi war are a small minority whose use of violence is rejected by the great majority of moderate Muslims. This may be true, but evidence to support it is lacking. Protests against anti-Western violence have been totally absent in Muslim countries. Muslim governments, even the bunker governments friendly to and dependent on the West, have been strikingly reticent when it comes to condemning terrorist acts against the West. On the other side, European governments and publics have largely supported and rarely criticized actions the United States has taken against its Muslim opponents, in striking contrast to the strenuous opposition they often expressed to American actions against the Soviet Union and communism during the Cold War. In civilizational conflicts, unlike ideological ones, kin stand by kin.
The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defence. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West. (Huntington pp. 216-17)
Because cultural divisions are playing a greater role in world conflicts and political ideologies are playing less of a role, we are seeing resurgence of religious consciousness and even of religious fundamentalism. This, in turn, serves to reinforce religious differences and exacerbate tensions, which already existed. Why has this revival occurred?
At one time, people assumed that developments like social, cultural, and economic modernization would ultimately lead to the death of religion. But, ironically, those are just the things which are causing the religious resurgence - and in particular, the increase of fundamentalism. The reason for that is because modernization has caused a severe disruption in the traditional sources of identity, authority and community.
People's place in the world and in history are no longer what they once were. Urbanization in particular serves to remove people from their traditional homes, lands and roots, transporting them to an unfamiliar and even dangerous place where none of the usual rules seem to apply. Alienated from their cultures and even themselves, it is to be expected that they will seek identity, community and authority elsewhere:
More broadly, the religious resurgence throughout the world is a reaction against secularism, moral relativism, and self-indulgence, and a reaffirmation of the values of order, discipline, work, mutual help, and human solidarity. Religious groups meet social needs left untended by state bureaucracies. These include the provision of medical and hospital services, kindergartens and schools, care for the elderly, prompt relief after natural and other catastrophes, and welfare and social support during periods of economic deprivation. The breakdown of order and civil society creates vacuums which are filled by religious, often fundamentalist, groups. (Huntington p. 98)
Religion, particularly of the fundamentalist variety, is ideally suited to provide disaffected and dispossessed people with a new identity and new purpose in life. For Muslims in the Middle East, it is also ideally suited as a reaction against the secularism, materialism and relativism they see coming from the West. We can see this sentiment expressed in an interview with Hassan al-Turabi, the former Sudanese parliamentary speaker who has also been a close confidant and teacher of Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri:
“Awakened Islam today provides people with a sense of identity and a direction in life, something shattered in Africa since colonialism. In the African context in particular, it offers a sense of common allegiance. Islam provides a focus for unity and a minimum consensus in the face of the regionalism and tribalism, which have been so devastatingly rampant in Africa. Another important factor to consider here for Muslims is the fact that Islam once produced a flourishing civilization. Unfortunately, this civilization was ultimately defeated and even colonized by Western powers; the resentment over this lingers even today.”
Fundamentalist Islam is felt to be necessary for the purposes of identity and authority in the Middle East. A softer, more liberalized Islam is regarded by many as capitulation to the West. The greater the differences from the secular, liberal West, the more secure and sound their identity will seem. This is a major reason, then, that there is such emphasis put on things like dress codes for men and women, strict gender roles, and more:
In coping with identity crisis, what counts for people are blood and belief, faith and family! People rally to those with similar ancestry, religion, language, values and institutions and distance themselves from those with different ones. (Huntington p. 126)
This is something, which liberal Muslims in the West often fail to understand. For them, a "liberalized" Islam does not threaten their sense of self - they honestly believe that the Islamic extremism we hear about on the news is just an aberration. And for them, it would be; but they are at least as much a part of Western culture as they are of Islamic culture. In addition, few experience quite the degree of alienation of cultural or political distress common among Muslims in the Middle East.
Thus, Muslims in the West lack a need to find identity and meaning in extremist attitudes and theology. Lacking this need, they fail to see why other Muslims would need it also. Socially and politically, however, fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East is probably unavoidable for the time being.
The clash between the West and Islam will be vital to the course of world events over the coming decades. Islam is, in fact, the only civilization, which ever put the survival of the West in doubt - and more than once! What is interesting is how this conflict flows not simply from the differences between the two civilizations, but more importantly from their similarities.
It is said that people who are too much alike cannot easily live together, and the same goes for cultures as well. Both Islam and Christianity (which serves as culturally uniting factor for the West) are absolutist, monotheistic religions. Both are universal, in the sense of making claims to apply to all of humanity rather than a single race or tribe. Both are missionary in nature, having long made it a theological duty to seek out and convert non believers. Both the Jihad and the Crusades are political manifestations of these religious attitudes, and both parallel each other closely.
But this doesn't entirely explain why Islam has had so many problems with all of its neighbours, not just the West.
In all these places, the relations between Muslims and peoples of other civilizations - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Hindu, Chinese, Buddhist, Jewish - have been generally antagonistic; most of these relations have been violent at some point in the past; many have been violent in the 1990s. Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbours. ...Muslims make up about one-fifth of the world's population but in the 1990s they have been far more involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilizations. (Huntington p. 256)
Several reasons have been offered as to why there is so much violence associated with Islamic nations. One common suggestion is that the violence is a result of Western imperialism. Current political divisions among the countries are artificial European creations. Moreover, there is still lingering resentment among Muslims for what their religion and their lands had to endure under colonial rule.
It may be true that those factors have played a role, but they are inadequate as a full explanation, because they fail to offer any insight into why there is such strife between Muslim majorities and non-Western, non-Muslim minorities (like in the Sudan) or between Muslim minorities and non-Western, non-Muslim majorities (like in India). There are, fortunately, other alternatives.
One is the fact that Islam, as a religion, started out violently - not only with Muhammad himself, but also in the following decades as Islam spread by war throughout the Middle East. A second issue is the so-called "indigestibility" of Islam and Muslims. According to Huntington, this describes the observation that Muslims do not easily assimilate to host cultures when new rulers arrive (for example, with colonization), nor do non-Muslims easily assimilate to a culture under Islamic control. Whichever group is in the minority, they always remain distinct - a situation which does not find a ready analog with Christians.
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