It is a clash of civilisations

[Guest guest]

It is a clash of civilisations

By MV Kamath

Source: Free Press Journal

 

 

Samuel P. Humtington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the

Remaking of World Order was first published in 1996. It was actually

on elaboration of an article he had written for Foreign Affairs three

years earlier, provocatively entitled "The Clash of Civilizations".

That article, according to the journal's editors stirred up more

discussion in three years than any other article they had published

since the 1940s. In his preface to his larger volume Huntington says

that "people were variously impressed, intrigued, outraged,

frightened and perplexed by my argument that the central and most

dangerous dimension of the emerging global politics would be conflict

between groups from different civilizations".

But neither when Huntington wrote his article nor when he

subsequently penned his larger thesis could be possibly have dreamt

that a day would come that witnessed the carnage in Yew York and

Washington DC. In this book he had written: "The post-Cold War,

multipolar, multi-civilizational world lacks an overwhelmingly

dominant cleavage such as existed in the Cold War. So long as the

Muslim demographic and Asian economic surges continue, however, the

conflicts between the West and the challenger civilizations will be

more central to global politics than other lines of cleavage". That

has turned out to be prophetic. Huntington clarified it further by

adding: "The governments of Muslim countries are likely to continue

to become less friendly to the West and intermittent low-intensity

and at times high-intensity violence will occur between Islamic

groups and Western societies". Huntington is wary. He speaks

of "western" societies when, no doubt, he has in mind Christian

societies.

 

Osama bin Laden, however is quite specific when he claims that his

war would be against Christians and Jews. Would it, then be correct

to infer that a major conflict between Islam and Christian nations

(howsoever they are identified) is in the offing? Is what we see

unfolding in the world merely an example of `terrorism' or the

incipient unfolding of something far more dangerous: a clash of

civilizations? Huntington quotes one authority as saying: "Muslim

nationalism is becoming more extreme. It now takes no account of

other national sensibilities; it is the property, privilege and

political instrument of the newly predominant Muslim nation...

Increasingly, Islamic religious fundamentalism is also gaining

dominance in determining Muslim national interests".

 

The point Huntington make is that the primacy of the "West" is on the

decline, that it is a slow process, that it does not proceed in a

straight line but is highly irregular with pauses, reversals and

reassertions of western power and finally that "power is the ability

of one person or group to change the behaviour of another person of

group", the change being possibly brought about "through inducement,

coercion, or exhortation, which require the power-wielder to have

economic, military, institutional, demographic, political,

technological social an other recources". Does this king a bell? As

Huntington sees it, while democratic movements have been gaining

strength and coming in power in southern Europe, Latin America, the

East Asian periphery and central Europe, Islamist movements have been

simultaneously gaining strength in Muslim countries. He calls it

Islamic Resurgence which at its "broadest level meant affirming or

reaffirming the Islamic character of their state and society".

 

How did Islamic Resurgence get its boost? The first boost come as

result of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and the second was the

Gulf War when Islam showed a resilience hithertounsuspected. For

those who fought the Soviets the Afghan War was something more

than "the first successful resistance to a foreign power". It was a

war based on Islamic principles. In helping Afghanistan fight it,

financial support came from Saudi Arabia which, between 1984 and 1986

gave $ 325 million to Afghan resistance. In 1989 the Saudis agreed to

supply 61 per cent of a total of $ 715 million, or $ 436 million, to

the resistance. In 1993 the Saudis again gave $ 193 million to the

Taliban government. If Islamic Resurgence continues to grow, believes

Huntington, then it can put the survival of the West in doubt.

 

But as yet the Islamic challenge is mooted.One reason, according to

Huntington, is that for Islam to bloom, it needs a "core state" and

an Islamic core state has to possess the economic resources, military

power, organizational competence and Islamic identity and commitment

to provide both political and religious leadership to the ummah.

Hutington says that at present though six states are from time to

time mentioned as possible leaders of Islam, not one of them has all

the requisites to be an effective core state. Indonesia which has the

largest Muslim population is located on the periphery of Islam, far

removed from its Arab centre, besides which, its Islam is of the

relaxed, southeast Asian variety.

 

The author concedes that Pakistan has size, population and military

prowess and its leaders have fairly consistently tried to claim a

role as the promoter of cooperation among Islamic states and the

speaker for Islam to the rest of the world, except that it

is "relatively poor and suffers from serious ethnic and regional

divisions, a record of political instability and a fixation on the

problem of its security vis-a-vis India". What about Turkey?

Huntington says that among Muslim countries Turkey is unique in

having extensive historical connections with Muslims in the Balkans,

the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and "having

experienced the bad and the good of the West in secularism and

democracy, may be equally qualified to lead Islam". But to do so it

would have to reject the Ataturk's legacy more thoroughly than Russia

has rejected Lenin. That is not seen likely to happen.

 

So where does the alleged Islamic Resurgence end? Daniel Pipes, a

Lecturer at Harvard and an authority on Islam in his work in The Path

of God: Islam and Political Power points out that "the single most

critical factor leading to the Islamic Revival of the 1970s" was the

oil boom which gave activist Muslim regimes "huge amounts of

discretionary revenues". However, according to him "to the extent

that the Islamic Revival (what Huntington describes as Resurgence) is

based on the oil boom, it is a mirage". How? As he explains it: "As

the financial circumstance of the sheikhdoms decline, Islamic hopes

in many countries will suffer. The excitement of the early boom years

will sour, signalling the end of an era. The confidence that played

so large a rule in leading Muslims to experiment with fundamentalist

and autonomist solutions will be destroyed.

 

The power of Saudi Arabia and Libya will fade as their disposable

funds diminish and the two countries return to their former

inconsequential isolation." And Pipes further adds: "As oil revenues

subside, the ummah will be left with expectations which exceed its

skills and resources, the process of readjusting to earned income

will destroy the illusion that success can be attained on Islamic

terms. At that point Muslims will have to choose between adaptation

to realities and coming to terms with Westernisation or accepting an

increase in apologetics, introversion and poverty". But that may take

another five or six decades.

 

But where will all this leave India? Huntington asserts that "the

great beneficiaries of the war of civilizations are those

civilizations which abstained from it. With the West, Russia, China

and Japan devastated to varying degrees, the way is open to India if

it escapes such devastation even though it was a participant, to

attempt to reshape the world along Hindu lines".

 

Huntington quotes another authority, Carroll Quigley, author of The

Evolution of Civilizations; An introduction to Historical Analysis as

saying: "Western civilization did not exist about AD 500; it did

exist in full flower about AD 1500 and it will surely pass out of

existence at some time in the future, perhaps before AD 2500".

According to Quigley, new civilizations in China and India, replacing

those destroyed in the West will then move into their stages of

expansion and threaten both western and Orthodox civilizations. This

would imply that as far as possible, India must stay out of the

civilizational conflicts between Islam and the West (which is a

synonym for Christianity) and let them fight it out. India would be

wise to stay aloof and watch Islam and the West slug it out.

 

In the clash of civilizations, according to Huntington, "Europe and

America will hang together or hang separately". That will explain, at

least partially, why Britain and the European Union are lending

support to the United States, now. They are hoodwinking the rest of

the world by saying that what they are planning to do is not to fight

Islam or even Afghanistan, but just terrorism. On the surface that

may well be. But deep down they know that this is a fight not just

against Osama bin Laden or terrorism but against what Islam stands

for. The West may duck the issue but it is there for all the world to

see. But is this inevitable? Have civilizations learnt nothing from

past conflicts? In the 1950s, Lester Pearon, the Canadian Foreign

Minister warned that humans were moving into "an age where different

civilizations will have to learn to live aide by side in peaceful

interchange, studying each other's history and ideals, mutually

enriching each others' lives".

 

The alternative as he put it is "misunderstanding, tension, clash and

catastrophe". But who will teach the likes of Osama bin Laden and

Gen. Musharraf? Huntington closes his monumental work with this last

line; "In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest

threat to world peace, and an international order based on

civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war". One could

only say `Amen' to it. Which means that perhaps we all should give

the United Nations a fresh meaning and significance and sense of

direction.