This essay will look at the ideas of Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations thesis and attempt to compare these

ideas with the real life situations that are presently occurring, mainly between the western and Islamic worlds. I will attempt to do this first by briefly describing the notion of the Clash of Civilizations, then by looking at the critiques of these theories, and then finally looking into the current events in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the terrorism in these same regions and seeing if there are any links between these events and the ideas proposed by Huntington. In order to re-evaluate Huntingtons ideas in light of todays events, we first need to take a brief look at what Huntington defines and describes as the clash of civilizations. Huntington proposed that unlike during the cold war years, the world is not divided into the First, Second and Third World, but rather divided into civilizations1. He defines these civilizations as the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from different species. He goes onto further say that civilizations can be differentiated by their history, languages, cultures and traditions2. This essentially means that there are many ways of defining oneself, and the highest order of that would be your civilization. Taking me for example, to someone in Cape Town, I would be from the southern suburbs, to someone in Durban I would be from Cape Town, to someone in London I would be South African, and to someone in New York, I would be African. He classifies the world into a number of civilizations, but focuses mainly on the Western and Islamic civilizations and essentially claims that the border between these civilizations is a fault line, and will be the battle lines of the future3. Looking at the events currently occurring in our society, one would have to agree with Huntingtons hypothesis as there does appear to be a major battle between the West and Islam, between Gaddafi and the rebels together with the UN, between the Palestinians and the Israelis and between Mubarak and the Egyptians. The question that should be asked however is whether these conflicts are due to the clashing of civilizations, or whether it is because of something completely unrelated. There are many people who disagree with the theories put forward by Huntington. One writer, Edward Said, claims that the clash of civilizations is a gimmick and that it should not be taken seriously. He says that it is a way of creating self pride rather than explaining the differences between the West and Islam4. It must be noted that Said appears to make more of a personal attack

1 2

S. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 23 S. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 24-5 3 S. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 22 4 E. W. Said, The Clash of Ignorance.

at Huntington rather than back up any of his points, claiming that Huntington was a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker5. Another one of the writers who disagrees with Huntington is Amartya Sen. He claims that humanity cannot be grouped into distinct civilizations because even within these groups there are differences. These could be cultural or language related, but it makes these groups different6. Sen believed that people can belong to many groups thus making these groups highly diverse and accused Huntington of having a solitarist view7. Because of this view, he essentially said that Huntingtons theory was based on a false assumption. This can be seen with the conflict between Pakistan and Bangladesh, both having the same Islamic beliefs and both falling into one of Huntingtons civilizations, but because of the deep-rooted cultural differences between these two nations, war in the area continues. The problem with the clash of civilizations theory is that is does not take into account the revolting of oppressed peoples. In numerous North African countries the people are rising up against their leaders. In Libya, the masses are rising up against Muammar Gaddafi, demanding better living conditions and for the dictatorship and his authoritarian rule to end. This conflict is not a clash of civilizations, but rather an intra-civilization conflict between people of the same culture and heritage, much like in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Another case is the Egyptians, revolting against Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands of people all gathered in Tahir Square in Cairo to protest against Mubaraks ruling, eventually culminating in the resignation of Mubarak8. This is also happening in the Sudan, with the South attempting to secede from the North. Another theory about the clash between the West and Islam is based on strategy. Neumayer and Plumper say that many of the attacks are caused by a purely strategic motivation in order to influence political decisions9. This example is more terrorism based and it describes the terrorist attacks on the West by Islam. In order to say whether these are indeed terrorism, we need to first define terrorism as it would be commonly thought of. Terrorism is described by Richardson as: deliberately and violently targeting civilians for political purposes.10 She goes on to further say terrorism has six distinct characteristics, these being: 1. The act must be politically inspired.
5 6

E. W. Said, The Clash of Ignorance. A. Sen, What Clash of Civilizations. 7 F. Evans, 9/11: Group Rights and Clash of Civilizations. 8 CNN Wire Staff, 2011 9 Neumayer, Plumper, International Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations, p712. 10 L. Richardson, What Terrorists Want.

2. The act must be violent. 3. The act must convey some sort of message. 4. The act and the target should have some sort of significance. 5. The act should be performed by sub-state groups, and not by a state itself. 6. The act must intentionally target civilians. 11 These characteristics perfectly describe the attacks on the West, for example, the 9/11 attacks were deliberately targeted at civilians, they were incredibly violent and they were performed by al-Qaeda and not the state of Afghanistan. This would make the attacks on the West not the clashing of civilizations, but rather terrorist attacks, performed by an organization and not in fact a civilization as predicted by Huntington. The attacks on the West by Islam could also be viewed as a West versus the rest scenario. A point that is raised by Huntington is that the West is trying to influence the human rights and democratic policies of the Asian world, believing that the American way is the best and that everyone else should follow them12. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was essentially an assassination and could be seen as metaphorically trying to kill the non-American ways that occur in those regions. What the Americans did was kill the person that organised that the 11th of September attacks on the World Trade Centre. What would have happened if al-Qaeda had decided to attempt an assassination of George Bush? After all he had invaded Afghanistan killing many Afghan people. These events would then be clashes between the Western and Islamic civilizations and I believe that Huntingtons theory could also be true for this case of West versus the rest. The Soviets invading Afghanistan would be another example of a strategic clash13. This invasion was a Soviet attempt to take control of Afghanistan and was not caused by the clashing of two different civilizations. Afghanistan was seen by the soviets as a threat to communism as the leader at the time, Hafizullah Amin, was recognized as a nationalist and against communism. He was assassinated and a new leader was appointed by the soviets to act as a puppet for Moscow14. This entire conflict was strategic rather than being a clash of civilizations. Looking at more of the events that are happening all over the world today, some of them could be described by the clash of civilizations. For example, in the Middle East, the Israelis and the Palestinians are fundamentally two different civilizations, and have had conflicts throughout their

11 12

L. Richardson, What Terrorists Want. S. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 41 13 G. Picco, The Challenges of Strategic Terrorism, pp11-6. 14 BBC Mobile News, 2008

histories. There are two civilizations forced into a comparatively small piece of land, and eventually there will be a clash between the cultures. To say that the clash of civilizations theory is not at all true would not be completely correct. It is actually applicable in some circumstances. In the Middle East, it would be fair to claim that the conflicts are caused by the clashing of civilizations. There are two primarily different cultures clashing over a small holy land with contrasting views over how they came to be, and hence they are two civilizations. However in other regions such as North Africa, the conflicts are not strictly the clashing of civilizations. These conflicts are rather intra-civilizations clashes caused by the deep dissatisfaction with the way their state has been run, and could not be predicted by the Huntington thesis. It is of my opinion that Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations theory is partly applicable to the US and Islam conflicts. This conflict was mainly started by terrorist attacks on the West by Islam; this in itself would not be a civilization clash and so would not be covered by Huntingtons thesis. However when the west invaded Afghanistan they attempted to impart their democracy and beliefs on the Afghans, and so this would in fact be a civilization clash.

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