The
Clash of Ideas
By Zulfiqar Rana, MD, MPH
Mobile, AL
Samuel Huntington climbed to instant
stardom after his "Clash of Civilizations"
(1) proved to be a prophetic counterpoint to Fukayama's
"End of History." (2) The premise of
his article was quite simple - people are divided
into civilizations and in the near future certain
civilizations are apt to clash in a mortal combat.
For him the West and the Muslim world were the
likeliest contenders and were headed on an inevitable
collision course.
Since then a lot has been said for and against
this premise. Amartya Sen, a Noble Laureate and
an economist who is best known for his work on
welfare economics, now joins the fray. In his
recent article in Slate he argues that the original
premise by Huntington is faulty and human beings
should not be viewed with the narrow vision of
religious affiliations alone. (3) For example,
he says:
"A person belongs to many different groups,
of which a religious affiliation is only one.
To see, for example, a mathematician who happens
to be a Muslim by religion mainly in terms of
Islamic identity would be to hide more than it
reveals. Even today, when a modern mathematician
at, say, MIT or Princeton invokes an "algorithm"
to solve a difficult computational problem, he
or she helps to commemorate the contributions
of the ninth-century Muslim mathematician Al-Khwarizmi,
from whose name the term algorithm is derived
(the term ‘algebra’ comes from the
title of his Arabic mathematical treatise ‘Al
Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah’). To concentrate only
on Al-Khwarizmi's Islamic identity over his identity
as a mathematician would be extremely misleading,
and yet he clearly was also a Muslim. Similarly,
to give an automatic priority to the Islamic identity
of a Muslim person in order to understand his
or her role in the civil society, or in the literary
world, or in creative work in arts and science,
can result in profound misunderstanding."
He then goes on to attack Huntington, saying:
"The difficulty with the clash of civilizations
thesis begins with the presumption of the unique
relevance of a singular classification. Indeed,
the question ‘Do civilizations clash?’
is founded on the presumption that humanity can
be pre-eminently classified into distinct and
discrete civilizations, and that the relations
between different human beings can somehow be
seen, without serious loss of understanding, in
terms of relations between different civilizations."
He is concerned that putting people into such
rigid and reductionist classifications not only
is a logical fallacy but also hampers dialogue
and interaction between the factions concerned.
It also overlooks internecine differences within
different groups. All this is assuming that there
is no conscious or unconscious effort to misguide
people. Take for example the case of Lt. Gen.
William Boykin. (4) He says:
"Religious or civilizational classification
can be a source of belligerent distortion as well.
It can, for example, take the form of crude beliefs
well exemplified by US Lt. Gen. William Boykin's
blaring - and by now well-known - remark describing
his battle against Muslims with disarming coarseness:
‘I knew that my God was bigger than his,’
and that the Christian God ‘was a real God,
and [the Muslim's] was an idol.’ The idiocy
of such bigotry is easy to diagnose, so there
is comparatively limited danger in the uncouth
hurling of such unguided missiles."
Sen is also sharp enough to point out that on
the part of the Muslims, and especially the militants,
there is some philosophical confusion. They confuse
Islamic identity with Muslim cultural identity.
His recommendation is that Muslim society should
not only concentrate on the Islamic aspect of
its civilization but also on its science and arts
which it should be duly proud of. He cites example
of Saladin whose strong Muslim identity did not
come in the way of appointing Maimonides as his
personal physician.
Overall his article is a cry for the need for
primacy of reasoning and logic over blind factional
(especially religious) allegiances. It is also
about how the world should be as opposed to how
it is right now. Sen sets out to confute the original
thesis by Huntington. He however, provides the
theoretical and ethical basis of what should be
done. Huntington on the other hand proves more
robust in explaining the ground realities of our
time regardless of the validity of his hypothesis.
For now it seems that Huntington's argument carries
a heavier historical weight. It remains to be
seen whether the future vindicates Sen's argument
or not. Only time will tell.
Notes:
(1) The Clash of Civilizations is a controversial
theory in international relations popularized
by Samuel P. Huntington. The basis of Huntington's
thesis is that people's cultural/religious identity
will be the primary agent of conflict in the post-Cold
War world.
Huntington's thesis was originally formulated
in an article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations"
published in the academic journal Foreign Affairs
in 1993. The term itself was first used by Bernard
Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue
of The Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Roots
of Muslim Rage." Huntington later expanded
his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order.
(2) "What we may be witnessing is not just
the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular
period of post-war history, but the end of history
as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological
evolution and the universalization of Western
liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
(Quoted from "The End of History", 1989).
(3) The article can accessed at http://www.slate.com/id/2138731/
(4) The General gained some notoriety for his
comments in 1993 during the Somalia war popularized
by the movie "Black Hawk Down". Common
Dreams website has this to report about him:
Yet the former commander and 13-year veteran of
the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken
evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform
and polished jump boots before a religious group
in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists
hated the United States "because we're a
Christian nation, because our foundation and our
roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is
a guy named Satan."
Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord
in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I
knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my
God was a real God and his was an idol."
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