Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

In its Golden Age, Islam’s influence reached all the way to Spain, Anatolia, West Africa, and India, among other regions. While these regions were all, in a way, united under a common religion, each of them both altered and were altered by Islam in their own unique ways. Although there were similarities that existed with the spread of Islam to each of those places, many more differences prevailed. Differences and similarities existed in the forms of the role of migration, role of trade, role of cultural exchange, methods of conversion to Islam, and the unique cultural developments in each region.

Samuel Huntington’s controversial article “The Clash of Civilizations?” was first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was subsequently turned into a book in 1996 titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. As this paper will show Huntington’s work can be seen as a product of the post-Cold War context it was written in. Huntington’s article takes a new perspective on the new world order and outlines a different way a thinking about how future world conflicts will unfold. Since the initial journal article was published in 1993 there has been a great deal of response from academics and also from Huntington himself. A majority of the responses come in the form of critiques, with the authors offering their own insight into how the post-Cold War World will operate. Although the validity of Huntington’s arguments have been questioned, it did create a great deal of controversy in the academic world. As Huntington explained in the preface of his 1996 book, the original article published in Foreign Affairs created more discussion in three years than any other article published in the journal since the 1940s.

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 Byzantine Empire, the successor of the Roman empire, is one of many religious civilizations that existed in the first millennium. While it was a Christian realm, simultaneous empires were to be found with other religious-political doctrines, such as the Islamic Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid empire and Buddhist China. This high diversity of beliefs, which shaped the entire societal and political structure, has undoubtedly influenced each others at a certain extent, and it was the case of Byzantium, which, after several moments of rise and decline, saw several political and religious reforms in an effort to centralize worship characteristics and create a more homogenous population. Perhaps one of the most significant of these refinements and one feature that displays the relevance of external influence is the beginning of Iconoclasm. Meanwhile, in the Asian continent, and particularly in China, a new religious-political dogma was emerging, known as Neo Confucianism. In this paper I shall discuss the iconoclast controversy, as an attempt to unify religious practices and beliefs, and its

The exchange of religion and ideas has been a common theme within the works that have been read. Many of the religious people studied mix their existing views of the world, which are often described as traditional “African” beliefs, with a mixture of the cosmology of Christianity, Islam, and other popularized, organized religion originating from across the world. Cosmological views held by different groups of people tend to vary, clash and change the way people go about their daily life.

Religion is a fundamental element of human society. It is what binds a country, society or group of individuals together. However, in some instances it destroys unity amoungst these. Religion is a belief in a superhuman entity(s) which control(s) the universe. Every religion has its differences but most strive for a just life and the right morals. The three major groups are the primal regions which consist of African, Aboriginal and Native American religions, Asian which consist of South Eastern Asian religions and Abrahamic religions which consist of Middle Eastern religions. The foci of this essay are the differences between the Abrahamic religion, Christianity, and the Asian region Buddhism as well as making reference to the Islamic

Over the centuries, the media has played a significant role in the shaping of societies across the globe. This is especially true of developed nations where media access is readily available to the average citizen. The media has contributed to the creation of ideologies and ideals within a society. The media has such an effect on social life, that a simple as a news story has the power to shake a nation. Because of this, governments around the world have made it their duty to be active in the regulation and control of media access in their countries. The media however, has quickly become dominated by major mega companies who own numerous television, radio and movie companies both nationally and

As of today, the world’s two largest religions Christianity and Islam share an estimated 3.6 billion members, more than half of the world’s population. On the surface, they appear to have almost nothing in common, however, as one goes beyond the surface and examines the other factors such as the rituals, beliefs, ethics, founders, and convictions, the two religions share many similarities. However, in order to truly see and understand these similarities and differences, one must date back to the rise and birth of Christianity and Islam.

Islam, Christianity and Buddhism are three of the world’s largest religions. Two out of them are considered Abrahamic religions that share monotheistic beliefs, while the remaining one is more of practiced philosophy of the mind. Monotheism is the belief of one deity that only exists in the universe.The Islamic followers are classified as Muslims, while the followers of Christianity are categorized as Christians and of Buddhism are called Buddhists. In this essay we will look at the socioeconomic and spirit___. Dual contexts that gave rise to each religion, specifically social inequality, national acceptance, and Religare. “To-bind”. This is the latin derivation for the modern english

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.

So what exactly is the clash of civilizations? This was briefly addressed in Samuel Huntington’s paper “The clash of civilizations?”. In order to explain the term, let’s first look into what civilization is. Person does not simply get to choose the civilization he/she simply belongs to. Communists can become democrats and vice versa, but Russians can never become Americans or Arabs cannot become European. In the conflict between civilizations the question is “What are you?”, it is something given and cannot be changed. Conflicts between countries are inevitable and with the way things work it is just a matter of time, before one country would not be comfortable with what other country is doing. In that case, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones [1]. The clash of civilizations often occurs on two levels. Micro-level is when small

This essay addresses the question of how, if at all, does the trend of intra-state conflicts among groups that have far outnumbered state vs. state conflicts, and if that trend in internal conflict within states over the last 20 years supports Samuel Huntington’s major hypothesis in his essay “The Clash of Civilizations.”

Islam is a religion that is widespread throughout our world. People who practice Islam are called Muslims. Regardless of cultural differences, there are basic tenets of Islam that are commonly held to be true. There are, however, regional differences in such things as how important religion is in daily life, who is considered a Muslim, and various Islamic practices. This paper will discuss these differences, as well as the history and basic tenets of the religion. Further, Islam’s relationship with Judaism and Catholicism will be explored.

Political scientist Samuel Huntington in his article, ‘The Clash of Civilisations ', argues a new concept predicting the primary origin of future conflicts. His hypothesis follows the idea that the cause of conflict will fundamentally begin due to the clash of people 's cultural and religious identities. Written from a post cold war perspective in 1993, Huntington discusses how future wars will follow a similar pattern. He focuses especially on the impact of the ‘dominant civilization ' of the West against the world 's contrasting civilizations. Huntington 's primary focus of the West as a dominating force against the rest is one critique of his argument. In addition, Huntington 's definition of a civilization is also very open-ended and takes an idealistic approach to what a civilization is. His single-minded hypothesis often ignores evidence of past conflicts and takes a very black and white approach to ‘us versus them '. However, ignorance fueled acts towards different cultures have caused conflicts, and Huntington does hold merit in terms of conflict being caused by clashing cultures in his argument.

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.