Samuel P. Huntington was one of the most powerful thinkers and a very important political scientist in America. In 1993, Huntington published a very controversial essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilization“ in which he argued that after the end of the Cold War, we would have a clash of civilizations. His works did not just explain the historical transformation but also helped us understand ways that altered how we looked at the world for good or bad.
According to Professor Huntington, human beings are divided along cultural lines-- Islamic, Hindu, Western, Latin, etc. There is no universal civilization. Instead, there are these cultural blocks; each block has its own values. He posited, “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” (1993). After many years of discounting Huntington’s ideas, many now have come to see that Huntington had been right all along.
The previous Arab countries’ political systems were the byproduct of regional rivalry, global arrangements, and developments in the international order after World War II. The League of Arab States was founded in 1945, but it did not truly represent any interests of the Arab countries, nor did it unite Arabians because regional rivalries among the countries in the Middle East or outside the Middle East cause so many people to die. A good example, the rivalries among Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia and between Shia and Sunni policies bring regional sectarian and ethnic divisions. Especially in the current civil war in Syria, Turkey is trying to topple the Shia regime and to replace it with a Sunni regime, so that it will represent the interests of Turkey. Also, Turkey is supporting the rebels in Syria to crush the Kurdish minority there and will not let the Kurdish minority have an autonomous region in Syria like they have in the Northern Iraq.
Another example of rivalries is Israel. With the rise of political Islam, most of the Islamist regimes, like Turkey, do not have a positive approach towards Israel, so that the Prime Minister of Turkey called Israel a terrorist state, and at the same time he ignored what Hamas is doing to Israeli civilians. Current changes in the Middle East have resulted in Islamic control over the political systems and a strong social and economic base that concern Israel. Global powers like the USA, Europe, Russia, and China believe their national interests will be negatively affected by the change in the Middle East and, therefore, are trying to influence the outcome with their own developments. As a scholar, Huntington saw that America’s key institutions and core liberal principles of limited government, individual liberties, checks and balances, majority rule, and free market economy are not compatible with Islamic institutions. We saw in Libya, after Qaddafi was deposed, that a group of Libyan people killed the U.S. ambassador, who helped liberate them from the wrath of Qaddafi. Another example may be seen when the Shia man threw his shoe at President Bush during his visit to Iraq, after the liberation from Saddam and his cruel dictatorship. There are so many examples like this that show that no matter what the West tries to do for Muslims, it will not make any difference because the root is in religion and the different values arising from it.
Philosophers, like Said Kurdi, think that the future of the Islamic world has the potential to become a serious superpower. The only obstacle for the Islamic world is their not being united and their not been practicing their Islamic teachings; that is why the Muslim world has been behind the West in advancements. In the early twentieth century, Said Kurdi invited the Muslim world to unite and to come back to the teachings of Islam. The Islamic world is a great power with its population of more than 1.2 billion. Muslims constitute one-fourth of humanity, and because of rich natural resources, of geopolitical, cultural, and geo- economic assets from Central Asia to Africa, the Islamic world now stretches over a huge area of land that gave rise to one of the greatest civilizations in history and now brings more attention to international world politics today. The effective use of these resources would give a strategic boost for the Islamic world to increase its impact on international politics. Said Kursi gave reasons for Muslims to be united “The reason for unity is divine unity, our oath and pledge is belief: we are united because we affirm Divine unity. All believers are charged with upholding the word of Allah. And at this time the most effective means of doing this is material progress. For the Europeans are crushing us under their tyranny with the weapons of science and industry. We shall therefore wage jihad with the weapons of science and industry on ignorance, poverty, and conflicting ideas, the worst enemies of upholding the word of Allah. As for external jihad, we shall refer it to the decisive proofs of the illustrious Sharia for conquering the civilized is through persuasion, not through forces as though they were savages who understand nothing.” Said Kurdi was asking for Muslims to be united. He saw division as one of the main reasons for the Islamic world’s backwardness: one of the gravest situations preventing all the people of Islam from perpetuating the high degree of civilization they possessed at one time, with the divisions occurring between them. Today when we look at the Turkish Muslim missionaries, we see the Gülen movement that has opened schools in 147 countries and teaches about Islamic belief, culture, and values, following the strategy of Said Kurdi regarding the rise of global Islam.
Many people, especially Muslims and liberals, criticized Professor Huntington, claiming that there is no such a clash of civilizations. But when we look around us, we are already in the midst of such a clash. When we look at what is going on in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia, Latin America, and Europe, we can understand that what we see is major power conflicts with one another and formed alliances that go along with their cultural or religious beliefs, in other words, with the same civilization. Huntington believes the Islamic civilization is the most problematic one because most Muslims do not share the general Western culture. For Muslims, the Ummah, which means the collective Muslim community, is more important than the nation- state. For Muslims, the meaning of democracy, individualism, and pluralism is different than for Western countries.
I think Huntington correctly predicts the result of a regime fall in the Arab world and the rise of political Islam with the new regime rejecting the Western way of life but preferring to follow its own trajectory and Islamic way of life. For example, for a long time Turkey tried to join the European Union, but Turkey is a Muslim country and has a set of its own values and culture. When the EU asked Turkey to adopt some of the EU’s criteria’s, such as a democratic system of government, respect for individualism, pluralism, respect for minority rights, and freedom of worship, Turkey balked and has not made any progress toward even one of these EU criteria.
Huntington wrote that if Brussels rejected Mecca and thereby a country, it would cause that country to move toward a civilization closer to its own. Thus, Turkey has shifted toward Central Asia and in many ways is choosing a pan-Turkic world. Not long ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey is seriously considering becoming a member of the Shanghai Cooperation, which is considered an alternative to the EU, because the EU criticized the human rights record of Turkey, especially regarding its Kurdish minority rights. Still more than 10 thousand Kurdish politicians are in prison without committing any crime, more than 400 Turkish generals are in jail, and many journalists who criticized a religion leader are incarcerated. Professor Huntington rightly predicted that Turkey will give up its frustration in trying to join the European Union and will seek to elevate its historical role as “the principal Islamic interlocutor and antagonist of the West.”
Nearly twenty years later, Huntington’s idea of clashes of civilization is more compelling than the critics’ rebuttal. In recent years, for example, the Middle Eastern countries have been shaken, and most of the countries have elected an Islamist to the presidency in open defiance of the dictators. Huntington feared that Islam would remain Islam; but he was concerned about whether the West and America would remain true to themselves and their principles.
Today there is such a clash between China as well as India and the United States, and it is akin to the great power clashes of the past. Most significantly, there is a fault line between the non- Islamic world and the Islamic world, and within Islam exists an old but forgotten or at the least ignored doctrine, ignored not because of any change in the Quran, Hadith, or Sura but because of the Muslim weakness regarding the non-Muslim world. That doctrine says that Islam will rule the world and thus humanity with its Qur’anic law. Now that weakness has ended with the Arab Spring, so that oil money and scientific and technological advances have helped spread the message of Islam much easier. Huntington, however, did not believe that Muslims could modernize and adopt the positive Western ways, such as science and technology, in order to lead the Islamic way to modernization. Nevertheless, now and in the past, there are wars and tensions where the Muslim world conflicts with other civilizations, so that, as Huntington predicted, no matter what happens, there always will be a clash between the Western and Muslim world. He suggests that it is better for the West to distance itself from the Muslims. Will the Western world avoid the clash by taking on Islamic values and the resulting way of life?
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the MCI and a regular contributor to The Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com, Mindanao Times and Kurdish Media.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
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