Reanalyze the Relationship of the West and Islamic Civilization Future

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.

In post-classical history, Islam was recognized for its loyalty to Allah and its precise rules of religion. Muhammad, founder of Islam, was born from a nomad-merchant class, giving a pulse to the traveling trait of Islam and its literal veins of expansion throughout the Eurasian borders. While keeping the classic code of Muhammad’s original law underway, Islam’s expansion during 600- 1200 C.E. introduced advanced authority and systems of economic control.

In the essay entitled “Islam and Democracy”, Benazir Bhutto argues that democracy and Islam are not mutually exclusive ideas, but can coexist peacefully. She provides ample evidence to back up this theory, citing both the Quran and the Constitution of Pakistan. Bhutto also provides the reader with reasons she believes the two are so rarely seen together. She attributes this to both religious extremism and the hypocritical policies of western countries; in particular, she points out the United States’ talent for supporting freedom in other countries only when it directly benefits the U.S. economy.

So first of all, what is democracy? “Democracy is a form of government that is not attached to any pre-given political or ideological ends, but allows ends to be chosen by the majority vote of free citizens.”(Fish, Opinionator.blogs.nytimes). In a democracy, anyone can run for office, and all eligible citizens can participate equally by voting. Everyone’s views, whether one is part of a majority or minority, are represented, and people can also freely express themselves and voice their own opinion. Furthermore, we peacefully solve internal conflicts, without

This direct linkage between modernization and westernization is, in fact, historically inaccurate. The history of technology development has actually indicated that the ideology or culture doesn’t really influence the modernization. When adopting modernisation, countries, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, doesn’t necessarily need to change its own culture. While most Muslim-majority countries are still undeveloped countries, the driving force is not their culture, but instead the clash of civilization itself. The fault line wars characterised by Huntington in fact have majorly taken place in the Middle East, including the war on terror and the Arab–Israeli War. This clash of civilisation characterised by fault line wars, in fact, leads to the chaos and poverty there. The appearance of this pre-modern image of those Muslim Countries is not the justification for the westernisation but the result of the clash of civilizations. Therefore, the inverted causality is inaccurate, and shall be corrected, as the clash of civilization can, in fact, hardly help those

Democracy is what runs the United States of America government, meaning that, as a whole, the country is very democratic. Accord to Oxford Online Dictionary, democracy can be defined as, “A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.” By taking a look at the political system of the United States, it is plain to see the correlation between our government and democracy. The American people are the “whole population” or “all eligible members”

The contemporary world of Islam faces an uphill battle defending itself from modern day misconceptions and the forced involvement with geopolitics. Islam struggles with the western world’s perception of the religion and cultural understanding. Modern day Muslims will have to overcome insurmountable hurdles in an attempt to rebuild the diversity and complexity within the Islam faith. Islam is in a constant battle with Western Civilization and its forced power and ideology on the Middle East. The current religious struggle between the Middle East and the West derives from thousands of years of bloodshed and conflict between the worlds three major religions; Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Blood that was shed during a period of holy wars and the ever expanding ruling powers such as Greece and Rome. The candle of hatred burns in modern times with the presences of radical extremist groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that continue to ignite hatred towards the West by manipulating the Qur’an and preaching concepts that conflict with the laws of Islam.

Today, the word democracy has been tossed around. In the words of Zhen Han “In modern society, democracy as a symbol of social civilization and progress is cherished” (Zhen Han). Democracy in any society should be because it gives the people of the nation power and liberty. The power of democracy has changed over time and didn’t necessarily work as a positive as it does today. During the ancient Greek times, democracy was split and mostly enjoyed by white males. The same happened in US history. “In the early period of US political history, democratic rights were given only to white males in colonies; today, although all citizens have democratic rights in law, what they really have in political life, in fact, are voting rights” (Zhen Han). If the United States really is a democracy, it has to have those voting rights. “Ideal democracy means that every individual should be respected” (Lihe Dong). The reality of having an ideal democracy is

Democracy has come to America. With the foundation of democratic by the Greeks and Romans, of English roots was the first to experiment and democracy was the answer for the Americans. By its equality of everyone has a role to vote, its voting vested in the people of supreme power through the representation of elections. With "that all men are created equal," and without the regulation of state power, that democracy could not survive. We learn from the mistakes, or to utilize critical parts is use today in America.

There are a lot of grounds to the assumption that Islam has this attitude since Islamic fundamentalist leaders, such as Sayyid Qutb (1988) have written that their attacks have been prompted by Western interference and that Islam must separate itself totally from the West. They see themselves distinct in so many ways including in religion, blood structure, culture, history, and philosophy and think it crucial that their nation must not get sullied by Western influence.

Bin Laden openly perpetuates conflict between Islam and the West. “This battle is not between al-Qaeda and the U.S.,” the al-Qaeda leader said in October 2001, yet “this is a battle of Muslims against the global crusaders.” From Bin Laden’s perspective, this “clash of civilizations” between Americans and the West has been under way for centuries and it is just the most recent incarnation of the Christian Crusaders. In October 2001, the Arabic satellite news channel aired an interview in which Bin Laden expressed his views on Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis. The following is a summary of bin Laden’s points in this interview:

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.

As history continues, many religions have had an over powering effect on western civilization. When the 5th century arose, the religion, Islam, had an extremely important impact on the civilization. Muhammad, an Arabic prophet founded Islam and began to introduce it the people of his time. Diplomacy, violence, warfare, public laws, and Arabic tradition played a crucial role in the building of the Islamic religion. These important aspects helped shape and build the Islam religion that is now one of the world’s most widely practiced religions.

Islam has developed its Just war theory from its early development in the time of prophet Mohammad himself, Islam began the process of political rule, exercise of power and even the exertion of political will and exercise of force and the formation of a highly effective governance and expansion. Islam the concepts of war, battle, and conduct of war, among other things are not some accretion that has to be theologically justified after well over 300 years of life of the faith, but rather they are central to the formation of Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and ethics because they happen during the life of the prophet and during the process of revelations (Amjad &Charles,240). Early sources of Muhammad and caliphates in political and social contexts become weakness in today’s context that they

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