Chugs Jay, interesting times. This from a link you provided, important enough I think to duplicate here.
September 20 1999 OPINION
Forecasts of worldwide conflict on the Islamic fault-line are chillingly accurate
A prophet of doom
The Times of London
by William Rees-Mogg
The world is full of violence. There are the massacres in East Timor; the murder of 300 Russians by terrorist bombs, probably related to Chech-nya; the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians and then of the Serbs in Kosovo; the Nato bombing itself, which has left Serbia devastated and Kosovo polluted with unexploded cluster bombs; the grumbling confrontation in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers; Saddam Hussein's plans for weapons of mass destruction; the Anglo-American response of sanctions and bombs. However safe we may feel going about our usual business in one of the West's great cities, this century of violence is ending with worldwide violence, and the threat of worse to come.
Those episodes of violence which seem of more than local relevance, or have resulted in intervention by the United Nations or the United States, all have something in common that the world is very reluctant to recognise. In one sense, East Timor, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq and Kashmir are all parts of a single global problem - they are all conflicts between Islamic countries or ethnic groups and other cultures.
They are not all confrontations between Islam and the West, though Iraq is such a confrontation, and is recognised as such throughout the Islamic world. Even the great Arab peacemaker, King Hussain of Jordan, said that the Gulf War was "a war against all Arabs and all Muslims and not against Iraq alone". The West is also deeply involved in the conflict in East Timor; the East Timorese are Roman Catholics, and Australia is the leading peacekeeping nation.
Yet the other three conflicts are not of Islam against the West, but of Islam against other world cultures. Kashmir is a conflict between the resurgent Islam of Pakistan and the resurgent Hinduism of India. Chechnya is a conflict between Islam and Russia, the core nation of Slav Orthodoxy.
Kosovo is an even more extraordinary situation, a conflict between Islam and Slav Orthodoxy, in which the West intervened on the side of Islam.
In 1993 Samuel Huntington, a Professor of International Studies at Harvard, published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that after the end of the Cold War conflicts between civilisations would dominate the future of world politics. He gave warning of the seriousness of "fault-line conflicts" between civilisations, and was much criticised for his observation that "Islam has bloody borders". East Timor, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq and Kashmir seemed to confirm that observation, whether or not one thinks that Islam is the more to blame in any particular case.
In 1996 Professor Huntington expanded his argument into a book, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order (Simon and Schuster, £16.99), which was described by Henry Kissinger as presenting "a challenging framework for understanding the realities of global politics in the next century". To an alarming degree, Professor Huntington's analysis seems to be proving accurate.
His thesis is that the people of the world have grouped into separate civilisations which have been a powerful force of cohesion in early human history. "Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the (Ancient) Greeks had in common . . . of all the elements which define civilisations, however, the most important usually is religion." He identifies several major contemporary civilisations: the Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western and Latin American, all more than 1,000 years old.
The four largest are the Chinese, Hindu, Islamic and Western, each with about a billion people. Each has its founding religion, around which the civilisation is formed: Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. China and India are the core countries of their own civilisation; the West is seen as double-headed between the United States and Europe; Islam has no core country, which makes it more difficult to relate to from the outside. Islam and the West, in different ways, present the world with the greatest difficulties. The West is perceived as claiming a unique dominance; it represents both a universal power, based on American technology, and a universal ideology, based on liberalism, democracy and human rights. The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was seen by the Chinese, and by the other civilisations, as a symbolic exercise of Western arrogance.
The other civilisations perceive the West as alarmingly powerful in military and economic terms, while being undermined by social indiscipline, the break-up of the family, loss of religious belief, crime, drugs and the underclass, as well as by ageing populations, low savings and unemployment.
The West may see itself as the model for the next century; all the other civilisations see as much to avoid as to emulate. "The West is overwhelmingly dominant now and will remain number one in terms of power well into the 21st century. Gradual, inexorable and fundamental changes, however, are also occurring in the balances of power amongst civilisations, and the power of the West . . . will continue to decline," Huntington says.
In the 75 years between 1920 and 1995, the West's share of political control of territory declined by 50 per cent, of world population by 80 per cent, of world manufacturing output by 35 per cent and of military manpower by 60 percent.
Islam is divided into some 45 independent states, but is united by the strongest of the great world religions, in terms of its cultural hold on its followers. It has one great economic advantage - control of much of the world's oil reserves, which are predicted to run out some time in the next century. It is still in a stage of rapid population growth and Muslims are expected to make up about 30 per cent of the world's population by 2025.
Already, Islamic immigration has caused a strong political reaction in Western Europe; half of the babies born in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, are to Arab mothers. Young, unemployed and disaffected Muslims are a threat both inside their own countries and to the West.
"The Islamic resurgence has given Muslims renewed confidence in the distinctive character and worth of their civilisation and values compared to that of the West. The West's simultaneous efforts to universalise its values and institutions . . . and to intervene in conflicts in the Muslim world, generate intense resentment among Muslims."
The danger lies in the reaction between this revival of Islamic confidence, backed by a growing population, and the fears of the neighbouring civilisations. All the neighbouring civilisations feel potentially under threat.
The West is concerned about oil, nuclear proliferation, immigration, the survival of Israel and human rights. The threat to Russia is even more direct, from the current wave of terrorism and claims for independence. The Serbs fear a greater Albania. India fears Pakistan and potentially the alienation of the 100 million Muslims in India itself. China is concerned about Central Asia and about the Chinese in Indonesia. The non-Muslim population of sub-Saharan Africa has anxieties as well.
It cannot be said that Professor Huntington's proposed remedies are as convincing as his analysis. I am more optimistic than he seems to be about the future relationships of three of the four largest civilisations. I expect the West's relationships with China and India, and their relationship with each other, to continue to improve.
Islam is the unresolved problem. Certainly the West needs to show much greater insight into the Islamic revival, which will develop further. Arrogance, cultural supremacism or downright hostility must be the worst possible response. Yet, as in Serbia, the neighbours of Islam will find their own populations reacting to Islamic revival. It was fear of the Albanians in 1987 which brought Milosevic to power. The world is not going to find it easy to bind up the "bloody borders" of Islam.
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