“A Clash of Civilization is Unavoidable” – Whether or not we are witnessing the world social movements, ideas of this are standstill and to bear both of the backlashes and the positive perspectives.
People often think that civilization is something related to globalization, modernization, or Westernization. Therefore, the debates among civilizations will somehow clash these scales worldwide.
The idea of “The Clash of Civilization” (COC) here is taken from the Huntingtonian theory, which was proposed by political scientist Samuel Huntington in a 1992 lecture.
Samuel Huntington
According to Huntington, the world major civilizations are divided into 8 groups including the West, Latin America, the Orthodox-Russia, the Eastern world, the Muslim World, Africa, Caribbean, other cleft countries. The hypothesis of the COC arises the problems around the cultural and religious identities in the future conflict.
In this note, I’m going to point out that Huntington’s perception is not quite true in terms of religious and cultural diversity. He argues, “The West must exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests to strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests and values, and to promote the involvement of non-Western states in those institutions.”
That is because he imagined that the connection of these two religious identities could be one to encounter the West’s interests, values and power. However, the Chinese themselves have seen the Confucianism as a negative obstacle, which can hold the national development back. The evidence was the time of Mao Zedong in 1966; he launched the Cultural Revolution with the rectification of superstitious.
Yet the Confucian Renaissance in the 1990s was taken as a source of Chinese national identity worldwide up to now. While it is understandable that Muslim is not about Al-Qaeda or Islamist politics or the September 11 attack, that is the faith-based conception, which it is compatible with international human rights in terms of international relations and other religions beyond any geopolitics.
The Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976)
He argues, “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 cultural…The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.”
To fortify the argument, if we look at the issues of cultural and religious identities under the colonialism. The civilizations accidentally disrupted during this period of time in many countries around the world. However, the colonial rules or any assimilation are only parts of fossilized historical events. Though the Christian was a dominant religions that many nations used in the past to aiming the religious propaganda, what we are actually observing the modern world or precisely after the time when Huntington’s book was published in 1993 – more than 2 decades already, is all cultural roots of each nation remain as a major source of national identities, and the religions are kept to practice and see some religious symbols such as Dalai Lama who presents Buddhist values and traditions, Pope Francis – the current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the increasing movements of Muslim not affiliating with any terrorisms as extremism like what people have thought so far. In other words, religions can have some certain effects on political movements but not the whole aspects of the clash of civilization.
Furthermore, due to the globalization and the results of immigration, cultural lines can be modified but religious ideas still embrace the credence in all societies.
If we have look at some countries like Japan, China, and the Four Asian Tigers, in a parallel development, religions and cultural traditions are maintaining, the authoritarian societies show that these nations distinguish from the West. Another example is Russia, the core state of the Orthodox civilization. Russia has a unique civilization because they have distinct traditions, great power status, the self-confidence of the country’s political leadership, and foreign policy aims.
Finally, “The Clash of Ignorance”
Edward Said issued a response to Huntington’s thesis in his 2001 article, “The Clash of Ignorance”. Said argues that Huntington’s categorization of the world’s fixed “civilizations” omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture.
Edward Said & Orientalism
It is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis
#Dialogue Among Civilizations
Mohammad Khatami
Mr Picco was appointed the Personal Representative to the Secretary-General for the United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations in 1999 in order to facilitate discussions on diversity, he said, “History does not kill. Religion does not rape women, the purity of blood does not destroy buildings and institutions do not fail. Only individuals do those things.”
To do this, Governments, the United Nations system and other relevant international and non-governmental organizations were invited by the United Nations General Assembly to plan and implement cultural, educational and social programmes to promote the concept of the dialogue among civilizations.
To sum up, the a-world-of-clashes-of-civilizations seems to be improbable if we care about the universal principle than little self-knowledge, improving rather than overthrowing.
Ref:
Clash of Civilizations 2017, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, viewed 7 April 2017, < https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clash_of_Civilizations&oldid=773976934>
LI, Chen 2017, ‘How Inevitable Is A “Clash of Civilization”?’, Journal of Cambridge Studies, vol. 5, no. 2-3, pp. 104-116, viewed 7 April 2017, <http://journal.acs-cam.org.uk/data/archive/2010/201002-article11.pdf>
Said, EW 2001, The Clash of Ignorance, The Nation, viewed 7 April 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance>
The Myth of the “Clash of Civilizations. Edward Said 2017, YouTube video, Palestine Dairy, viewed 7 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPS-pONiEG8
The Digerati Politics 
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