"Clash of Civilizations", "Islam and the West" mirages

31 years ago, Foreign Affairs magazine published the most influential treatise of its time: Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. This treatise served as a powerful motivation tool in shaping the world and starting new wars.

Despite the fact that so much time has passed since then, times have changed and reality has changed, even today, students read the work with the same great interest and enthusiasm as before. But how? The work has been dismissed by a wide range of academic circles as completely irrelevant and baseless. In this article, we present analytical and critical opinions and information about this book and the famous opposition "Islam and the West" in it.

Here is Huntington's hypothesis on which he based his theory:

"According to my scientific hypothesis, the main source of conflicts in the new world will not be primarily intellectual or economic. The dominant source of great differences and conflicts between humanity will be culture. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world relations, while the main conflicts of global politics will be between peoples of different civilizations. and between groups. The clash of civilizations dominates global politics. The rifts between civilizations serve as points of future battles."

Islam and the West

Since the colonial period, false concepts and assumptions were formed that "Islam and the West have a natural, internal opposition, the West is a high, cultured, developed region, and Islam is backward, lagging behind in development, and in need of cultural reform." This way of thinking was further developed when Samuel Huntington's thesis was written. The basis of these views was that Islam was at the bottom of these two horizons, far from culture, and therefore doomed to be ruled by Christians.

At this point, we must refute this "duality" with reasonable arguments. It's just a simple fact that we've moved past this "binary." Today, the state of empires is not bipolar, but formless. Now let's take a quick look at the market of ideas where the twin enemies of "Islam" and "the West" are displayed. Over the past quarter of a century, following bestsellers from Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (1993) to Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1998) and Bernard Lewis's How It Went Wrong, Islam and The hypothetical civilizational conflict between the “West” has escalated to dire proportions.

Among the most popular of such books, the French political scientist Gilles Kepel, in his book Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2002), devoted to the emergence of the most sober and moderate Islamic currents, agrees with this argument and (aside from the colonial and imperial context) "Islam" and " The West” details militant insurgencies in much of the Muslim-majority world as a sign of conflict. This form of thinking was more widely used and abused than others. The fact that "Islam" is in existential opposition to "modernity" and therefore to the "West" has become a unique form of hatred.

In this highly influential and popular bestseller series, Islam is seen primarily as a serious illness diagnosed in the fringes of "the West," its political lineage. According to Gilles Kepel, who represents a broad spectrum of thinking in Europe and the United States, the main goal of these Islamist movements is to establish "a global Islamic state based solely on a strict interpretation of the Qur'an." According to such an analysis, the West is an innocent bystander who has been peacefully doing its work for centuries, and the evil Islam has unwittingly carved its niche for it. Such arguments are completely wrong. "Islam and the West" is not a binary, but an inseparable unity. They should be seen together as two sides of an obsolete coin.

Such authors are symptoms of a social plague that has become acute as a result of the growth of power circles at any point in any society, culture, or history. Therefore, it is necessary to look carefully at such figures with open eyes, examine and study their features in detail. The chronic nature of the plague was once well-known and diagnosed by the famous author and scientist Edward Said in his great work "Orientalism". According to his conclusion, such persons are mere toys of political interests in the center of colonialism, used to develop the "East" which they can easily control. But the disease is more serious.

In his "holy" portrayal, Huntington depicts the United States as an enlightened intelligence under siege, while the rest of the world is held captive by satanic fanaticism. In his opinion, the "West" is threatened by Asia and Islam together, while the threat of Asia is strategic and economic, the threat of Islam is cultural. Huntington later expanded his 1993 thesis into a large book, using anecdotal evidence from European colonial history in the East. However, the issues on which this book is based are much older.

In fact, the first signal came from Allan Bloom's famous book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Subverted Democracy and Morally Impoverished Today's Students. it sounded in the book. This book became a sensation among a wide readership. Soon the general public began to read it, and thereby learned how ignorant and uneducated it had become, that the great classics of the West were no longer read with the respect and dignity they deserved. After that, a number of works related to the same topics appeared in the world. The conclusion drawn from this was that Western civilization was on the brink of a new danger and crisis. This now gave rise to the inner religious zeal and drive which had driven the previous Crusades - the desire to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the "Muhammadans". In this way, two twin towers of Islam and the West, which are in complete conflict with each other, were built.

Evidence that Huntington's theory is wrong

The most influential part of Huntington's theory was related to Islam. Huntington argues that with the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, a new conflict will emerge between two mutually hostile enemies: the West and Islam. Huntington argues that identity, not ideology, is the heart of modern politics. Huntington's theory has flourished the publishing industry: thousands and millions of books are purportedly calling for war against Islam.

In developing his theory, Huntington relied on the work of the famous Orientalist historian Bernard Lewis, who coined the phrase "Clash of Civilizations" in 1990:

"We are facing a regime and a movement that is far above the level of problems and policies and the governments that run them. It is a real clash of civilizations—an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, today's secular age, and the perhaps irrational but certainly historical response to the global expansion of both."

Like Huntington, Lewis was a partisan. Writing in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and the protests in the streets of Tehran, Lewis was shameless. He put forward the opinion that almost two billion Muslims all share the same opinion and their eyes see nothing but hatred for the West.

The location of the September 11 incident

So, have Huntington and Luce's predictions come true? Are Muslims really at war with the West as two wise American authors predicted? Is there really a Clash of Civilizations, as many others believe, not just Huntington?

There is no doubt that the 9/11 attack on the United States by al-Qaeda provided a great deal of evidence for Huntington's grim analysis. In recent years, a wave of Western attacks on Muslim countries, including deadly terrorist attacks in London, Paris and other Western cities, has seemed to widen it.

All prominent politicians, from US President Joe Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to former British Prime Minister Theresa May, speak the language of the clash of civilizations.

Although 9/11 seemed to fulfill Huntington's prediction, it did not. The real conflict was not between the US and Islam, but between the US and al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS).

ISIS and Al Qaeda are not the cause

So far, we have not seen any of the 50 Muslim countries of the world declare war against the United States, or form a coalition of Islamic countries. When a similar coalition emerged in 2017, it was led by Saudi Arabia and sponsored by the United States.

No matter how oppressive and large-scale the terrorist phenomenon is today, groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda remain on the fringes of Islam. Major Islamic powers follow realism in the implementation of international relations, and the only Islamic group, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, is nothing more than a forum for dry rhetoric.

Turkey oscillates between Russia and the US, whose armed forces are the second largest in NATO. Despite the Islamic overtones, Iranian politics is based on nationalism. Although its conflict with the US is escalating, Iran's biggest struggle today is geopolitical (ie against Saudi Arabia), with Europe (ie the other half of the "West") seeking better relations with Tehran.

The Saudi Arabian regime remains America's staunchest ally in the region, despite its reliance on Wahhabism. Other Islamic powers like Turkey, Iran and Qatar are its main enemies.

The politics of religion

Many credible analysts in the Arab world hold the United States to be largely responsible for the conditions that led to the existence of terrorist groups such as ISIS, which invaded Iraq and destroyed all state institutions.

Most importantly, Huntington was wrong when he said that religion was a decisive factor in war. Religious politics is certainly a means, not an end. But Huntington had a serious world-shaping importance. His thesis that the civilized world was fighting "radical Islam" provided the Western military-industrial complex with a new global, systemic, multinational enemy to replace communism.

Huntington's theories failed in Syria. The network of alliances that have emerged during more than seven years of conflict has rejected its civilizational model, emphasizing geopolitical and economic interests rather than cultural ones. The West (US and Europe) formed a coalition with Islamic forces against the Syrian government, a secular regime. The US, UK and France have directly provided weapons to groups that could be considered Islamist and turned a blind eye to their allies arming overtly radical groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The current US president, Joe Biden, described this situation in a speech at Harvard University in 2014: “Our allies in the region were our biggest problem in Syria... What did they do? They are hell-bent on toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and have essentially created a Sunni-Shia proxy war. except, of course, the extremist elements of jihadists from other parts of the world."

Promotional activities

Until now, it is no secret that in southern Syria, Israel is supporting Syrian rebels along the Golan Heights liberation line, and that a significant number of these rebels are Islamists, including the group known as al-Nusra Front, formerly al-Qaeda's branch in Syria.

In addition, in Syria, the US is actively cooperating with another, albeit secular, predominantly Muslim group: the Kurds. The US has been closely coordinating its Syria policy with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, and with Turkey before the Kurdish issue flared up.

For this reason, it is inappropriate to call the conflict in Syria a clash of civilizations. In fact, Sunni Muslims are the main targets of ISIS, many of whom ISIS calls apostates for not joining the ranks of the reborn caliphate. Despite all its propaganda efforts and the attraction of thousands of young refugees, ISIS remains and will remain a fringe group. We must not forget that there are about 2 billion Muslims in the world today, most of whom are living ordinary lives.

Huntington supporters may argue that the Syrian war is a war between civilizations within the Islamic civilization. This analysis is also completely wrong. It is true that the Muslim world has been struggling to redefine itself since the caliphate was officially abolished in 1924, but the struggle in Syria, though different and stranger in appearance, is largely a conflict of interests.

The struggle for dominance

Iran supports Shiite militias in Syria and Yemen, while also actively supporting Sunni Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Even though Iran is a Shia country, we can see some Shia leaders in Iraq working closely with Saudi Arabia to balance Iranian influence.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has been actively supporting the right-wing Christian party, the Lebanese Forces, which massacred thousands of Muslims during Lebanon's civil war in the 1970s and 80s, because it is completely aligned with Saudi policy in Lebanon. The Saudi-Iranian conflict is not a war between civilizations, but a geopolitical struggle for dominance in the region.

The above-mentioned alliances and conflicts seem paradoxical in relation to Huntington's model of civilization, but are perfectly reasonable when viewed from the perspective of the real political balance of power.

All these years after the emergence of the "clash of civilizations" theory, its explanatory power is still questionable. Even if Huntington's "prophecy" is somewhat vindicated by the events of 9/11, it can easily be dismissed by any astute observer of international affairs and politics.