OLIVIA WARD
A decade ago, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington predicted a "clash of civilizations" that would pit culture against culture in a war of values rather than borders. His influential book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, excited politicians and outraged pacifists. But 10 years later, anxious and confused Westerners are dusting off their copies and debating whether Huntington's prophecy is coming true.
| I'd say that's self-evident, but then I'm not an innalekshul... |
On the face of it, there's scant reason for reassurance. Al Qaeda warlord Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, and Osama bin Laden is in hiding. But young disaffected Muslims are joining militant movements in ever-greater numbers, and hatred of the United States and the West is escalating. Meanwhile, the so-called "war on terror" continues, fought by legal and illegal means that convince even moderate Muslims they are the targets of an anti-Islamic crusade.
| First you've got to find the "moderate Muslims." I'm not sure how many "moderate Germans" or "moderate Italians" you'd have found in 1939 or 1940, or "moderate Communists" under Stalin. Seems to me that if the "moderate Muslims" can't grasp the fact that the War on Terror has developed into a War on Islamism then they're the ones with the problem. |
Insecurity abounds among non-Muslims, with experts as well as ordinary people decrying the anti-terrorism campaign, and 86 per cent of leading American foreign policy analysts calling it a failure in a recent survey.
| I don't know where those figures come from. The insecurity among non-Muslims might have something to do with the fear of being bombed or gassed by people with turbans while going about their daily business. |
The jihadists, and their opponents on the extreme Christian right, are gaining an edge with apocalyptic warnings that a "final battle" between the Muslim world and the West is now inevitable.
| I'm really missing something, since I don't see the finger of the "extreme Christian right" in the WoT. It's just not there for me. Such utterances as we've seen from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been puffed up by the press, but they've been pretty stoopid. The Christians make a convenient strawman to be erected to conjure up the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party." So this is just another cheap shot with no substance to it. |
"I've met Arab teenagers who were trying to raise $100 for a bus ticket to the Iraqi border to join the fight against the Americans," says Middle Eastern scholar Fawaz Gerges, author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy. "They weren't even religiously educated Islamists. It's shocking how radicalized large segments of the Muslim population have become, worldwide."
| They used to sign up for the SS in droves, too, back in the day. The kiddies see themselves in a romantic light, rushing off the fight the infidel. They're capable of chosing sides in the clash of civilizations, something which the author isn't. |
But Gerges and others who study the progress of jihadism and the war on terror say that building a basement bunker is premature for worried people on both sides of the cultural divide. The real clash, they insist, is not between Muslims and the West, but within Islam itself.
| It's got a funny way of showing it, doesn't it? |
There is also a fierce battle between Western liberals and conservatives struggling for the souls of their countries.
| We've noticed that, too... |
"We're talking about a clash of fundamentalisms in both camps," says Gerges.
| No we're not, and that's where their world view is lacking. The mere fact that you don't want to see your civilization destroyed by another one doesn't require any fundamentalism on your part. It's a matter of self-preservation. But if you're too frightened by the thought of actually defending yourself you thrash around to try to come up with excuses for your inaction. The fact that you find an excuse doesn't make it a valid excuse. |
"In the Muslim world, a thin layer of culture and tradition is being imposed on the wider community. Even though the people who are doing it belong to a tiny minority, they are very effective at campaigning and they have set powerful forces in motion."
| The "thin layer of culture and tradition" is Wahhabism and its ally, Deobandism, and the tiny majority that's doing the imposing has a lot of money, coupled with the desire to see blood spilled to get its way. Dismissing them is stupid. |
America, says former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, follows the same dangerous pattern: "It is sometimes convenient for purposes of rhetorical effect for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad," she warned in a recent essay in the Los Angeles Times. "It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The (George W. Bush) administration's penchant for painting the perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences."
| But what if he's right? What if the enemy really is not only bad, but Bad, even Evil. The evidence would seem to point in that direction. There are the vicious attacks on large numbers of civilians in the name of Islam, and all the atrocities you can imagine, starting with cutting off people's heads. There's continuous oppression of non-Muslims, the fostering of ignorance and xenophobia, the manner in which women are treated... I could go on all night. It's fashionable, I suppose, to deny the existence of evil, but the empirical evidence says it exists. |
In America, analysts say, such apocalyptic thinking fits neatly into the culture of fundamentalist Christianity, and a substantial number of Americans believe the end of the world is inevitable. Launching wars against "evildoers" and unbelievers is a way of provoking a "final battle" of all against all.
| That's a part of fundamentalist Christianity, I guess, but it's not the impetus toward the War on Terror. That was four hijacked aircraft and 3000 Americans dead. |
Bush's religiously tinged rhetoric convinces some of his critics that a clash of civilizations is his goal.
| They have to reach for that conclusion, but they eventually get there. But some people are able to believe five impossible things before breakfast, too. |
"One suspects that the right is full of apocalyptic excuses for not facing the huge challenges looming in the future," says Deepak Chopra, author of numerous books on spiritual healing. "There is a whiff of apocalypse hanging over the Iraq war, whose rationale may have a lot to do with the Book of Revelations, the rise of the Anti-Christ, a climactic battle in the Holy Land and so on. These scenarios are not divinely manifested, though we make them happen out of our own will, expectations, and perverse love of crisis," he said in the Huffington Post.
| Somehow I never saw the war on Saddam Hussein's regime in those terms. I've always seen it as the destruction of a bloody-handed tin-hat dictator whose truculence and consorting with known terrorists made him a logical target in a campaign to do away with... ummm... people like him. Nobody was throwing allusions to the Anti-Christ around in early 2003. |
Extremists in the Muslim world are also courting the Armageddon that a clash of civilizations would create.
| Apparently more consciously that the U.S. has been, given some of Ahmadinejad's statements. But since you have an actuality on the one hand, there must be a corresponding actuality on the other, right? Whether it's visible to the naked eye or not? |
And, analysts say, the invasion of Iraq has intensified and speeded up the violent evolution of jihad. "There is a sense of apocalypse now," says Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements at the Israel-based GLORIA Center. "Not just youngsters, but people with families, in their 30s, are willing to go to Iraq and blow themselves up. That is something new. About 700 people a year are killing themselves there. They feel that they are living on the eve of the end of history, and the great victory of Islam is coming."
| Of course, they could be wrong. But that Olde Tyme Religion's a good hook to entice the rubes to sacrifice themselves for Sammy and Izzat Ibrahim and Zark and their ilk. Binny's been pushing his jihad as a resumption of the Crusades, and it's obvious that there are lots of people who're willing to buy into that, conflating Binny's brand of Islam with the entire religion. It's my opinion that's not going to redound to Islam's ultimate benefit. |
New, too, is the attraction to terrorism of middle-class and wealthy young Muslims in Arab countries and the West, who are backing and planning attacks against "infidels" and "occupiers."
| Actually not. The younger sons of the middle class and the wealthy have kind of traditionally been the revolutionaries of our world, regardless of the ideology. |
And, Paz says, their nihilism is reflected in an American policy of endless war against terrorism that was exemplified by the invasion of Iraq. "When the Americans started the Iraq war, they waked all kinds of sleeping demons, both Sunni and Shia. They aroused many social and cultural ones, not just in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world. That has fuelled the jihad. If you look at the reaction to the killing of Zarqawi, you see that hundreds are thanking the Americans, because now there will be an even bigger wave of jihad."
| Yasss... Better to have left him alone. But it's my opinion that jihad was around long before we bumped off Zark. We've been in an undeclared war with at least a portion of the Soddy royal family for 30 years. Had Binny not jumped the gun with 9-11 we'd have been even more thoroughly infiltrated. |
Loretta Napoleoni, London-based author of Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation, agrees: "It's turned into an anti-imperialist movement without end," she says.
| What else is new? Everybody who's joined any kind of revolution for the past fifty years has draped themselves in the cloak of anti-imperialism. That doesn't make the charges of imperialism valid. When we start demanding tribute from subject states, then it'll be valid. |
"Many of the jihad recruits aren't interested in classic motivations like recreating the Islamic Caliphate.
| They're interested in running off to fight jihad against infidels, though. |
"The ones who were arrested in (the recent bomb plot in) Ontario may not even have a final objective.
| There was that part about demanding the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and cutting off the Prime Minister's head... |
"As long as they attack, it's sufficient. It's purely nihilistic, like some of the old anarchist movements in Europe. And because the people who attack are gone afterwards, it's much more difficult to find out who (the cells) are and how they operate."
| Not quite so. When the Bad Guyz pop their beturbanned little heads up to commit an atrocity like the Madrid or Bali bombings it exposes their entire structure, which can then be dismantled. The fact that there are more where they came from is beside the point. Eventual victory in the WoT will be achieved when the head cheeses are destroyed. The real head cheese aren't Binny and Mullah Omar, though it would do my heart good to see them dead. |
But while a minority of Muslims are embracing jihad, many others are moving in the opposite direction, say those who have closely studied the politics of the Muslim world. "Arabs are desperately looking for democracy, and there is real dynamism to the movement now," says political scientist Amr Hamzawy, a senior associate with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They are fed up with their ruling elites and they've lost trust in governments and leaders."
| They're not real paragons of good government, are they? But then... |
But ironically, Hamzawy says, the West, and particularly the U.S., has supported autocratic leaders who violently suppress democratic movements. "Traditional American support for the region's autocrats has created a very negative image among the Arab masses. The way in which Western countries have reacted to (the Palestinian militant group) Hamas's election victory, and America's support for the Saudi regime and (President Hosni) Mubarak in Egypt, as well as the invasion of Iraq, explains why there is so much anti-American feeling in the region." And, he says, "the perception in Washington is that if you let Arabs vote, they'll take the most radical alternative."
| Lemme see, here. Sammy, the most autocratic leader in the Muddle East, is taken down and Arabs rush off to blow themselves up to restore his rule. We toss the Talibs from power in Afghanistan and Arabs rush off to reinforce the remnants of they try to regain power. When we put pressure on Syria the Arab League rushes to his defense. When we put pressure on Hosni to hold honest elections we're rebuffed. When we try to support freedom and democracy in Lebanon Arabs say we're meddling. Pick a place where we try to mitigate the oppression and we're in the wrong. Meanwhile, it's necessary to maintain diplomatic relations with most of those places for the normal conduct of international relations. Does the author have any suggestions? Is she in favor of invading someplace else and imposing democracy? How about Yemen? Or Sudan? |
Whether larger segments of the Muslim world become radicalized and a clash of civilizations becomes likely depends on whether the West can defuse the crises over Hamas, Iraq and the Iranian nuclear program, Hamzawy says. It also depends on whether Muslims themselves can open a frank debate on democracy and jihad something that has begun in the wake of the London and Madrid bombings, as well as the foiled Toronto bomb plot. "Non-violent movements have benefited a lot from the jihadists' growing lack of credibility," Hamzawy says. "It has always been a game between Muslim moderates and extremists, and what we are now seeing is a return of the moderate Islamists. That is a good sign, but only if there is agreement to build viable democratic systems."
| Yeah, it's a good sign, but it's still in its infancy, and moderate Muslims aren't the ones cutting the heads off the people who disagree with them. |
America, too, needs dialogue if escalating warfare is to be avoided, according to Charles Pena, author of Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism, and senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.
| Has anyone seen anything realistic emanating from them, by the way? |
"We have to examine how our own policies are contributing to the Muslim terrorist threat," he says. "Part of the problem is using the term `war.'
| "I prefer using another term. How does 'whipped cream' sound?" |
"If we are going to use military force to define the means by which everything is accomplished, war will be both endless and unwinnable."
| No war is endless. Even the Hundred Years War eventually ground to a halt. And wars are winnable. Ask any Gepid, Amalekite, or Aztec. |
The more people who are killed by American forces, Pena adds, "the more hatred there will be.
| To me, that says we're not killing enough of them, in a fearsome enough manner. Oderint dum metuant. |
"There are people, like Zarqawi, who should legitimately be attacked, although his death causes ripples. But the problem is when you bomb a house in Kandahar and kill 17 civilians, or hit innocent civilians in Iraq."
| It's the nature of the beast, isn't it? They call them "terrorists" in part because they use innocents as shields. |
In the U.S., Pena says, war has become the first line of resistance, and there is no debate on how to arrive at a more constructive policy.
| Hardly true. We watch the diplo wars here every day, watch the administration jump through hoops to follow all the prescribed forms and rituals. The end result is sometimes, but by no means always, war. |
"This administration has made it much worse. But whether the Republicans or Democrats are in charge next, we're going to see more of the same because we really don't understand how American foreign policy affects terrorism, and nobody wants to have that debate."
| We're back to us having to please them. Accomodation has to be two-way. |
Is a clash of civilizations likely, given the uncertain alternatives?
| It's under way, Bubba. It's being run from Riyadh, with a cheering section in Peshawar. |
"The answer, critics say, may be in the equally powerful force of diversity.
| Yes. We can see how well it's working in Europe. |
"There is no such thing as the Islam (the West) imagines, the looming monolith, the new bogeyman, the `Green Menace' taking the place of the now-dead `Red Menace,'" says Mustapha Tlili, director of the program Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S-the West at New York University's Remarque Institute. "There is an Islamic spiritual community, there are Muslim countries, there are Muslim people, Islamic traditions and various expressions of Islamic faith."
| There is al-Qaeda and there is the Muslim Brotherhood. There is Takfir wal Hijra and al-Tawhid and Ansar al-Islam. And there are the Soddy Princes. There are the ayatollahs, dreaming of Shiite world domination, and there are the Sunni mullahs, also dreaming of a Caliphate. If you deny their existence you're being dishonest, whether merely intellectually dishonest or spreading taqiya because you're on the other side. |
"Belief in religious separation and the allegedly inescapable hostilities linked to it has to come to terms with the existence of other powerful forces related to other identities economic, political, social, linguistic and many others," points out Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in Slate magazine. "The theory of an overarching `clash of civilizations' not only has to face the difficult problem of explaining so many different types of movements in the world today, it would not be able to provide much of an explanation for some of the most prominent political developments in contemporary history." 
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