C L O S E R

Revisiting the Clash of Civilizations

Posted on April 11th, 2012 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Multiculti Issues, Religion Other, Religious and Political Radicalization.

In 1993 Samuel Huntington would write an article in Foreign Affairs that became highly influential in global politics: The Clash of Civilizations? According to Huntington during the Cold War societies were divided by ideological differences, such as the struggle between democracy and communism. In 1993 a few years after the end of the Cold War he proposed an alternative hypothesis: “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural” In this article and subsequent book (note the difference in title) he ‘discovers’ eight civilizations:

1. Sino: the common culture of China and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and Korea.
2. Japanese: Japanese culture as distinctively different from the rest of Asia.
3. Hindu: the core Indian civilization.
4. Islamic: Originating on the Arabian Peninsula, spread across North Africa, Iberian Peninsula and Central Asia. Arab, Turkic, Persian and Malay are among the many distinct subdivisions within Islam.
5. Orthodox: Russia. Separate from Western Christendom.
6. Western: Europe and North America.
7. Latin American: Central and South American countries with a past of a corporatist, authoritarian culture. Majority of countries are of a Catholic majority.
8. Africa: He is not sure if Africa should be mentioned since it lacks a sense of a pan-African identity, nevertheless he claims that Africans are increasingly developing a sense of African Identity.

Watch here an interview with Huntington:

Since then his thesis has been widely discredited but gained new prominence after 9/11 that seemed to fulfil the prophecy of the clash of civilizations with regard to Islam (his reference to other civilizations has become blurred from the start). One of his main critics was Edward Said, who wrote the widely acclaimed and criticized Orientalism.

Said’s critique is valid and justified, nevertheless ‘the Clash’ is the basis of much contemporary thinking on Islam in politics ranging from left wing to radical nativist parties (albeit with important distinctions of course). When used in political rhetoric combined with atrocities such as 9/11 messages such as these become seemingly incontestable because reality is reduced in such a way as to be seen as inherent in the way things are. Because it refers back to actual incidents in which Muslims played a role and is informed by the widespread logic of essentialism, the rhetoric becomes predictable. At the same time such references provide authority to the central message that Islam is a religion that incites to violence and hatred. As such Huntington’s thesis contributes too, is part of and is the expression of a ‘culturalization of politics’:Slavoj Zizek- Tolerance as an Ideological Category

political differences, differences conditioned by political inequality, economic exploitation, etc., are naturalized/neutralized into “cultural” differences, different “ways of life,” which are something given, something that cannot be overcome, but merely “tolerated.” To this, of course, one should answer in Benjaminian terms: from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture.

It is the War on Terror that has become the symbolic enactment of the clash of civilizations. See the next documentary of Al Jazeera The 9/11 Decade – The Clash of Civilizations?:

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