“The Clash of Civilizations”
Book Review
Clash of Civilization
Outline
•
What is civilization?
• What has been civilization in the yore?
- Babylonians
- Assyrians
- Egyptian
- Greeks
- Persian
- Roman/Byzantine
- Islamic civilization
•
What is meant by the clash of civilization?
•
On what grounds civilization collide with each other?
- Religion
- Political powers
Outline Cont.…
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Has there been no clash within the civilization?
What are existing civilizations?
- Modern (Judo-Christian)
- Islamic
- Hindu
- Chinese
- Japanese
- Latin American
- African
World War 1,II & Cold War---On what grounds
End of history by Fukuyama
Huntington Theory
Criticism on his work
What is a Civilization?
An advanced state of human society, in which a high
level of culture, science, industry, and government
has been reached.
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Civilization entered the English language in the
mid-18th century with the meaning “the act or
process of bringing out of a savage or uneducated
state.”
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Origion from latin word civilis-citizen.
Three attributes: objective, subjective, and dynamic.
(1) Objective elements include language, history,
religion, customs, institutions
(2) Subjective elements include variable levels of selfidentification
(3) Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall, divide
and merge

Civilization and culture
Cultural entity
 Both refer to overall way of life
 Culture include
 Customs
 Traditions
 Mores
 Folkways
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Past Civilization
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Mesopotamian 3100 B.C
- Somarian and Egyptian
Indus 2500 B.C
- Harappa and Mohenjadaro
Babylonians
Assysians
Egyptian
Greeks
Persian
Roman/Byzantine
Islamic civilization
On what Grounds conflicts occur
Religion
 Political powers
 Land/Resources
 Culture
World War 1,11, Cold war
 Fukuyama “End of history” (now the war
of ideology is over and there is no rival
ideology of liberal democracy).
 Criticism---terrorism
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Huntington Hypothesis
(1)
(2)
(3)
World politics is entering a new phase in
the wake of the end of the Cold War
The “fundamental source of conflict in
this new world will not be primarily
ideological or primarily economic.
The great divisions among humankind
and the dominating source of conflict
will be Religious Cultural identities ”.
Conflict in Modern History
Conflict in the modern era, for Huntington, has
been largely a sequence of;
(a) conflicts between princes (what we will study
as the “Westphalia system”), then
(b) conflicts between nation-states (after the
French revolution), then
(c) conflicts between ideologies (during the Cold
War)
 Local politics---Ethnicity
 Global politics of civilization
 Rivalry of superpower is replaced by the clash
of civilization
The Two Levels of the Clash
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At the micro level, groups clash along the
“fault lines” of adjacent civilizations
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At the macro level, states from different
civilizations compete for political and
economic power.
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Conflict manifests itself in two forms: fault
line conflicts and core state conflicts.
Core state and fault line
conflicts
Fault line conflicts are on a local level and occur between
adjacent states belonging to different civilizations or within
states that are home to populations from different
civilizations.
 Core state conflicts are on a global level between the major
states of different civilizations. Core state conflicts can arise
out of fault line conflicts when core states become involved.
 These conflicts may result from a number of causes, such as:
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◦ relative influence or power (military or economic), discrimination
against people from a different civilization,
◦ intervention to protect kinsmen in a different civilization, or
different values and culture, particularly when one civilization
attempts to impose its values on people of a different civilization.
Religion and civilization
Important objective element that define civilization
 Major civilization in the human history identified with world
greatest religions
 Huntington division on religion basis
Western
Hispanidad/Latin American
Japanese
Sinic
Hindu
Islamic
Orthodox
African
Buddhist
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Reasons for inter civilization conflict
Differences between civilizations are more
fundamental and enduring than ideological or
political differences.
(2) Interactions between civilizations are increasing
(consciousness and awareness of differences
and commonalities).
(3) Cold war---perception of interests, power and
their ideological preferences (which side are
you on).
- New world---cultural identity crisis (who
are you)
(4) Modernization in non-western societies leading
cultural resurgence (individual and societal
level) spurred by modernization, global
politics is reconfigured along cultural lines
(similar cultures are coming together).
(1)
(continued)
Cultural characteristics are less alterable
and less easily compromised than political
and economic ones.
 Economic regionalism is increasing, which
will increase “civilization consciousness”.
 Common culture, Huntington argues, may
be a prerequisite for economic
integration.
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Fundamental clash b/w west & the
Sinic and Islamic civilization
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The fundamental clash according to
Huntington will be between the west on
one side and the Sinic and Islamic
civilisation on the other. The conflict along
the fault lines between Western and
Islamic civilisations has been going on for
1300 years. There are various factors that
have contributed in intensifying the IslamWest conflict in the late 20th century.
A surge in population growth in the
Muslim countries led to unemployment in
these societies and the youth become
recruits to Islamic causes.
 Islamic resurgence- an offshoot of back to
the roots phenomenon created culture
consciousness among the Muslims more
vigorously than at any other time in the
history.
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Cont...
The West is trying to universalize its values
and impose them on other countries
including Muslims while relaxing its
economic and military muscles but at the
same time the West is not realizing the
decline in its capability to do so or increase
in the power of other societies to resist any
such attempts.
 The demise of the soviet Union has
removed the common enemy of both Islam
and the west.
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Criticism on his Theory
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First, Huntington said that Islamic and the
Sinic civilizations would coalesce together to
counter the Western power as the allies and
Stalin did against Hitler. But while comparing
these two situations he overlooked the basic
point that the period of the allies-Soviet pact
was the period of ideologies that today is
over. Besides this his contention of IslamicChinese cooperation negates his very thesis
that now there is grouping in the world
along cultural lines.
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Second M.K Palat observes that the weakest
point of clashing civilizations theory is the
confusion of civilization as power bloc. The Islamic
world as a civilization may be discerned but not
an Islamic power conglomerate in the manner of
the west or China. Akber S Ahmad said “ The
Muslim world seems to be torn between those
who i would shake heaven and earth.to get
agreen card and become Americans and those
who shake heaven and earth to damage and
destroy Americans.” So how can we envisage a
world in which the whole Islamic world is pitched
against the West?
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Third Huntington argument is that the
modernization process is leading to
Islamic revivalism and ultimately
contributes to the process of civilization
consciousness. Thus why were the
relations between Islam and the west
stormy in the 11th century when there
was no modernization process and thus
culture consciousness.
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Fourth Huntington himself concedes the
fact the fact that there is no core state in
the Islamic world. Thus the absence of
leadership will be followed by the absence
of organization to act in concert against
the Western civilisatin.
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Fifth many Muslims countries have slid
into chaos and internal disturbance and a
virtual civil war is going on in these
countries between among various factions
all of whom claim to be Muslims. These
clashes within a civilization undermine
Huntington thesis that people sharing
same culture are coming together.
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Sixth according to Samuel religion is the
most significant of all the objective
elements defining civilisation. But
Bangladesh’s succession from Pakistan
was concerned with language and politics
and not religion.
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Seventh, Amartya Sen in his essay titled. A
world not neatly divided attacks Huntington
theory by giving the example of movements
that involve people without any distinction
of culture, language or politics. He cites an
example of Anti-globalisation protestors
whose movement include all the poor
people across borders, regardless of
territorial boundaries or any other barrier.
Thus shared poverty can also be a motive
for people struggling together.
Reasons
This struggle between the Western civilization and
Islamic civilization is manifested in many styles
including:
1. Dominance over the media apparatus and directing
them for the benefit of the Capitalist civilization.
2. Dominance over the education syllabi at all its levels
in order to spread the Western concepts, distort and
fight some of the concepts of Islamic civilization and
forge the history of Muslims.
3. Establishing schools and universities directly
supervised by
Westerners.
4. Sponsoring those whom they call the elite, educated
and intellectuals, focusing light upon them and
promoting them, so that they become the leaders of
thought in the countries of the Islamic world.
5. Funding the educational scholarships and courses in
their various types, to choose those suitable to
become their intellectual or political agents, or agents
i.e. spies.
6. Founding institutions, clubs and centers specialized in
spreading their poison, and spending generously upon
them.
It is not a Clash of
Civilization
 It is Conflict of
Interests: Economic,
Political, Military
 Conflict may be in
the
name
of
Culture
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Conclusion
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In a nutshell, Huntington’s theory in which
he has envisioned the clash among
civilizations to be the climatic point of
development of cultural fault lines is
riddled with snags and loopholes and we
cannot apply this theory in the emerging
economically interdependent world.