One of Ours

I have never been much impressed by the "clash of civilizations" theory advanced nearly a decade ago by American scholar Samuel P Huntington...a somewhat forced theory concocted as an answer to the "end of history" theory advanced at the time by another American scholar, Francis Fukuyama...

...Fukuyama's theory consecrated the victory of liberalism: what he meant by the end of history was not that history itself had come to an end but that conflicts over how to interpret the course of events had come to an end with the unchallenged victory of one specific ideology, liberalism...

...The main argument used to validate Huntington's theory is that he was the first to predict that civilisations will eventually come to clash, ten years before this became evident in the eyes of most observers. This was interpreted as proof that his theory is credible and should be taken seriously...

...Huntington argued the case for the inevitable clash of civilisations from the standpoint of Western civilisation, one can even say from the standpoint of the religions of that civilisation, namely, Christianity (with its different subdivisions) and Judaism, which together make up what is generally referred to as the Judeo- Christian mainstream civilisation...

...this has introduced an inconsistency: how to reconcile Huntington's statement that a clash between the West and Islam is inevitable, and then adopt the West's theory of ever-growing globalisation, side-by-side with ever-deeper clashes between civilisations?.

And yet there are facts that cannot be denied and which clearly indicate that a clash of civilisations is not merely a figment of Huntington's imagination...

...The Arab-Muslim dimension in the "clash of civilisations" theory is gaining ground in large part because of the rise of terrorism and because the perpetrators of terrorist acts often invoke Islam to justify actions that are reprehensible in the eyes of the international community. Unresolved conflict situations in the Middle East are facing us with an impasse: despair over the inability of the international community to come up with a viable political settlement induces the protagonists to commit acts of violence which they see as a lesser evil than succumbing to an untenable state of affairs, but which are actually counterproductive. We have no choice but to recognise that there is a need for an all-out condemnation of terrorism. But it also seems there is a similar need to go on tolerating, and even perhaps encouraging, such acts secretly, on the grounds that tolerating them is less costly than paying the price of condemning them outright. This duality in behaviour is an expression of weakness, not of strength. It leads to the further escalation of mutual violence, and makes moving out of the vicious cycle all the more difficult...

...we must also require the stronger parties to engage in some genuine self-criticism of their own and to admit that the terrorist acts perpetrated by their opponents is a consequence of frustration, despair and total loss of hope in anything constructive. Despair has reached the point where suicide bombers see death as preferable to life...

...It is futile in the age of globalisation to build security fences, however high they may be -- whether actual walls made of concrete, of electronic spying devices or of instruments of psychological warfare. Globalisation implies the very opposite of erecting separation barriers. That is the essence of Huntington's inner contradiction. And it has been established that the products of the globalisation market, including WMD, rarely remain the exclusive possession of one contending party alone...