Huntington And Mamdani 's Views On Culture And Islam

Huntington introduced a very controversial and debatable theory of clash of civilizations seems to prove itself correct, with the Western Christianity on one hand and the Orthodox Christianity and Islam on the other. He states that clash of civilization is unavoidable and is predicted in the near future. Today, we can already see those tensions and conflicts between civilizations, due to differences in cultures and traditions. While West is becoming more modern, the Islamic world is going back to its roots. Traditions, language and religion separate two civilizations causing conflicts that lead to violence (Huntigton, 25). This clash was mostly highlighted in 9/11 terroristic attack, which separated the West from the East.

Huntington’s initial article argued that in the post-Cold War era the fundamental source of conflict would not be ideological or economic, but cultural. He continues by arguing that nation states will continue to be the most powerful actors in global affairs, but the conflicts of global politics that are to occur in the future will happen between

In fact, while the distinctive ideologies and religious groups still exist, the clear boundaries of different civilizations characterized by Huntington have blurred. When this dichotomy to recognize the world as direct confrontations between ideology and culture groups becomes no longer valid, the theory of the inevitability of the clash of civilization, thus, are now flawed, because it is realistically unreasonable, ethically wrong, conceptually biased and historically inaccurate. These problems regarding the clash of civilizations embody a misleading western supremacy shown in Bush’s speech as well as the war on terror on a larger

The civilizations, as identified by Huntington are Sinic [Chinese or Confusious], Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox [Russian], Western [Europe, North American, Australia, New Zealand], Latin American and possibly African. And it is among these groups that share a “common interest and common values” and have a “common culture or civilization” that will lead to more interdependence on members of the same civilization and less dependent on the West. Huntington’s theory is that the West has had [at one time or another] a negative impact on every other civilization, and this has led to a decline of power and influence around the world, especially the Islam civilization. Therefore he predicts, “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

The argument Huntington is giving is that there will not be near as many fights over politics and economic values but more of culture and religious values. Throughout the article he talks a lot about what he believes will happen but one thing that we can be sure is he believes that there will be war over culture. “As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an “us” versus “them” relation existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion.” This quote from the article shows us that he does believe people will fight because they see it as it is their culture against everyone else’s. It is hard to talk things out with people who believe the complete different things you believe.

Huntington also does not see westernization as a desirable surge that engulfs world politics. Conflict is very natural and history proves that argument. The author takes away focus from states as a foundation of war in the future and more on conflict between major culture regions. He states that peoples cultural and religious identities will be the primary bases of conflict post cold war. The world is becoming a smaller place with modernization and technology; thus, relations between people of different civilizations deepen consciousness and awareness. Post cold war, the role of the Western society enhances the growth of civilization. Unlike Fukuyamas argument, Huntington states that cultural characteristics and differences are more complex to solve than political and economical

Huntington that hypothesised a new post-Cold War world order. Prior to the end of the Cold War, societies were divided by ideological differences such as the struggle between democracy and communism. Huntington’s primary thesis argues, “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political or economic. They are cultural.” Huntington makes a very persuasive argument as to how new patterns of conflict will occur along the boundaries of different cultures and patterns of cohesion will be found within the cultural boundaries. The book goes into extensive detail of how world systems between civilizations, which he divides by culture into 7 main global civilizations, are impacted on an international relations scale by this changing nature of conflict. He focuses a great deal on the West’s ability to maintain military superiority through the nonproliferation of emerging powers. In particular relation to 9/11 he focuses on the emerging influence of Islamic culture (which he classifies as it’s own civilization) being quintessential in the emerging new global conflict arisen out of hundreds of years of conflict, military and cultural, between Western civilization and Islamic civilization. The clear limitation of this work is that it is based on his own perception of history and is purely a hypothesis, however it clearly has a great degree of validity to it as we have already seen through the last decade in the rise of terrorism as the new global conflict. This book will assist my essay writing particularly in analysing how 9/11 marked the beginning of a new era of global conflict between powers larger than nation states alone, and thus how this has created increasingly complex paradigms of unprecedented effects on international

Following the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, questions regarding what the new world order would began to arise. In the article published in 1993 “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Samuel Huntington predicts that the conflicts of the new world order would be between civilization and based in culture, rather than in ideology or economics (22). In his paper, he identifies seven (or possibly eight) civilizations that will interact with each other, provided six reasons as to why these civilizations will clash, recognizes the idea that civilizations other than the West are on the rise and makes suggestions as to how the West should act if his initial is to become true. Since the publication of his article over 22 years ago, Huntington

The last aspect to point out in more recent times compared to the crusades and colonialism is the cold war, and how that has and will continue to impact the opposing views of western and Islamic societies. According to Samuel Huntington, the cold war the world was separated into the First, Second and Third Worlds, and he sees divisions are no longer relevant and it being “…far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.” Distinguishing people in the correct way can help further people understanding of the cultural and educate people enough to not fall into such prejudices and stereotypes. Huntington believed that there will be more conflict between the two societies in time to come. One way he expresses this is by the post-cold war conflict in the Persian Gulf, and Caucasus and Bosnia, now although these were not full-scale war between the civilizations, it still involved many “…elements of civilizational rallying, which seemed to become more important as the conflict continued and which may provide a foretaste of the future.” With that, it is notable to see all the differences that has risen recently between China and the United States in such areas

In Samuel P. Huntington’s article “The West: Unique, Not Universal,” he addresses his audience with a very controversial question: Is Western Culture universal or unique? Huntington elaborately opens up this question with research and examples to explain and persuade readers that the West will never be a universal culture for all, but rather a unique culture that will be accepted by those who appreciate it. For decades now, historians and scholars have debated with one another to determine who is right and wrong. However, from a handful of articles from different scholars, Samuel Huntington’s statement that the West is unique rather than universal is supported and even further elaborated on by these particular sources. A common understanding between all the sources, that must be noted, is that a civilization’s culture is not comprised of material goods but rather their culmination of their religion(s), values, language(s) and traditions. While although there are scholars out their that negate the West is unique, a large amount of scholars still argue and strengthen Huntington’s argument that the West has unique and exclusive characteristics that make them distinctive and rare.

After analyzing Thomas Friedman’s theories, the arguments presented by critics, and the examples of violence since the late 1990s, it is clear that the later works of Friedman still hold validity in today’s global landscape. These works were an altered version of Friedman’s previous reports, but offered a more realistic approach to the subject; a change that was widely noticed and appreciated. While today theories like the Dell Theory are accepted by the community, the same could not be said about Friedman’s early works, such as the Golden Arches Theory. The optimistic ideology displayed in Friedman’s earlier works has lost its place in society. As the number of global conflicts increased, Friedman’s work lost more of its validity.

Samuel Huntington sees an emerging world organized on the basis of "civilizations". Societies that share cultural affinities cooperate with each other and the efforts to force a society into another civilization will fail; countries gather around the leading States of their civilization. This description of the process of new structures of international relations that Huntington sees developing, leads him to consider that the greatest risks of violence and confrontation lie in the Westerns’ claims to universality, which are leading them to increasingly get into conflict with other civilizations, particularly Islam and China; local conflicts, especially between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate new alliances and lead to an escalation of violence, which will usually lead the dominant states to make an attempt to stop them.

Islam is one of the oldest religions in history dating back to about 600 AD. It began when a man named Muhammad heard a voice from the heavens instructing him to proclaim the word of god. Currently there are over 800 million followers of the Muslim religion. The main text of the religion is the Quran which is said to be the word of God, or Allah as called in Muslim. Within the Quran, The five pillars of Islam are proclaimed along with many other concepts very unique to the Muslim religion. Prayer is a very important aspect of Islam as well. Islam has a long history of invention, heritage, and world imperialism that must be understood to completely identify with the concepts of the religion and culture.

Samuel Huntington, the author of the clash of the civilisations believes that the World will eventually divide in accordance with cultural lines, and not political lines. According to Huntington, “the thriving East Asian and Muslim societies will soon challenge Western dominance, and the United States being the World leader will need to reevaluate its policies on foreign invention and domestic immigration to remain a major player.” During the Cold War, the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Huntington views these ties as insignificant now and states that the remaking of the World order will be based upon cultural similarity. The different thriving civilisations according to him today are the Western civilisation comprising of North America and Western Europe, the Muslim civilisation, the Orthodox Civilisation led by Russia, the Chinese civilisation, the Hindu civilisation, the Japanese civilisation, the Latin American civilisation and the African civilisation. Huntington’s proposition of the division of the World according to cultural lines has been backed by the use of various examples by him; examples of events that have taken place in the past.

In The Clash of civilizations Huntington argued that the future conflict would be different in the Post-Cold war era. In which different ideologies would not be the main reason for world problem but instead it would be because of the differences between cultures. The division of power would be placed in the civilizations that have the similar cultural norms. Huntington states that the “most dangerous enmities occur across fault lines between major civilizations” (20). This argued that foreign affairs cannot be peaceful or accommodating rather that these affairs go onto the basis of the influence of power based on different civilizations societal norms. The major societies that Huntington included were the western, Sinic, Islamic and Orthodox civilizations. The “ fault lines” between these societies