Said's response to Huntington

["zaina 2" <xeena16@hotmail.com>]

zaina al-mohtaseb
      In the Clash of Civilizations, Huntington advocates the belief that 
the primary source of conflict, which will cause division between people, 
can be solely identified as “culture”.  In his paper, he discusses several 
major civilization identities that he believes will battle sometime in the 
future.  In his work, he stresses the inevitable battle between “Islam” and 
“the West”.  His heavy reliance on an article by the orientalist, Bernard 
Lewis, causes Huntington to simplify and attach stereotypes to these two 
civilizations.  He draws a dividing line between the “East” and “West” and 
describes the “West” as better off economically while the East as less 
likely to develop stable democratic political systems.  This great 
simplification of civilizations ignores the "internal dynamics and plurality 
of civilization" and ignores the positive interactions between civilizations 
due to globalization.  This lack of acknowledgment for the complexity of 
civilization has been branded by Said as "downright ignorance (Said, 1)."
	Not only does Huntington simplify the two civilizations, but he also 
ignores the positive aspects that result from interaction between different 
civilizations. Huntington stresses that differences among civilizations such 
as language, history, culture, tradition, and religion have caused conflict 
and violence.  He believes that a smaller world "enhances the civilization 
consciousness of people and invigorates differences and animosities 
(Huntington, 24)."  He also says that differences in culture and religion 
cause problems and tension between the two civilizations in policy issues 
such as immigration, trade, and commerce.  Huntington forgets (or more 
accurately disregards) that there has been much economic and intellectual 
exchange between differing civilizations in the past, as well as in the 
present.  There has been an increase in the exchange of information due to 
improved means of transportation, television, and the Internet.  Therefore, 
it is very presumptuous of Huntington to portray the West as an isolated 
civilization superior to and thus needing to battle the Islamic 
civilization.  He even goes as far as to say that "Western ideas of 
individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, 
liberty...and free markets have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, 
Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures (Huntington, 40)."  
Huntington’s highly prejudiced view of other civilizations proves his 
inadequacy in producing a work in the field of cultural study.  The lack of 
acknowledgment of the pre-modern exchange of ideas, values, and discourse 
makes the reader question Huntington’s goal.  Exegesis of the Quran, the 
Muslim’s holy text, centers on ideas of free will, liberty, and uplifting 
the individual in context of the society.  The teachings of Islam did away 
with common practices of slavery and infanticide in the tribal communities 
of the Arabian Peninsula.  Women’s rights were mentioned in Islam’s primary 
texts as well as put into practice by early leaders and theologians.
	Huntington classifies Islam and the West as two separate entities.  In 
reality, these two cultures have been interacting since the rise of Islam in 
the 7th and 8th centuries.  Throughout history, Islamic philosophy, science, 
and thought have influenced the West.  Averroes and Avicenna commented on 
Greek philosophical texts and actually saved many Greek texts from 
extinction.  It is notable to say that Averroes was actually a Spaniard by 
birth, a Berber by ethnicity, and an Arab by language.  He was the epitome 
of cultural exchange and is known as being the greatest commentator on 
Aristotle.  All socio-historical evidence negates Huntington’s idea of a 
segregated “West”.  His own source, Bernard Lewis, produced a work 
specifically called The Muslim Discovery of Europe.  For Huntington, it was 
easier for him to choose to ignore the fact that Islam and “the West” have 
been historically intertwined so as not to interfere with his 
over-simplistic theory of the clash of civilizations.
Instead of acknowledging the ever-present secularist and moderate ideologies 
in Islamic countries, Huntington describes Islam in terms of the extremist 
views and actions of some radicals.  For example, Huntington uses Saddam 
Hussein's interpretation of the Gulf War to portray Islamic belief and to 
support his theory of Islam and its "bloody borders."  In reality, the Gulf 
War was a result of a local despot rising to power with hopes of increasing 
his strong hold and in order to do so used Islam as a cover-up for his own 
personal agenda--one that circled around attaining an increase in social, 
economic, and political power. Shaykh Jadd al Haqq, a Muslim religious 
leader, even "denounced Saddam as a tyrant and brushed aside his Islamic 
pretensions as a cover for tyranny."  Huntington also attributes all 
fighting in the Middle East to Islam and even goes as far as saying that 
"Islam has bloody borders."  This extremely biased view does not take into 
account the various factors that have resulted in Middle Eastern nations to 
engage in acts of war.  It is disturbing to see such negligence on part of 
someone who writes such a bold work.  His belief that the cause of any 
conflict between the West and the Middle East is due to Islam and its 
adherents is most unwarranted and utterly simplistic.  He does not take into 
account actions taken by Western nations that have caused violence to erupt 
in different parts of the Middle East.  Despite some conflicts, which 
Huntington stresses in his paper, there is a great deal of trade and flow of 
culture and ideas back and forth between the two civilizations.
	Many have used the events of the September 11 attacks to lash out at 
Muslims and to criticize Islamic society in general.  Thus, instead of 
placing the blame on the group of radicals, who construe Islamic ideology to 
their own personal purposes, people quickly attribute the cause of the 
occurrences to Islam as a whole.  Many people are quick to attribute actions 
of radicals or extremists, who strip the rich meaning of jihad or "inner 
struggle" to mean simply "indiscriminate war against presumed enemies," to 
Islam.  They make disturbing generalizations about Islam without truly 
understanding the religion, whose Arabic root means peace.
As Said explains, it is much easier to hate and assert passionate statements 
than to analyze the interconnectedness of both civilizations.  Thus, since 
the September 11 bombings, there has been a large amount of hate speech and 
crimes directed against Arabs and Muslims, despite the fact that most of 
these people are American citizens, who disagree with the bombings and the 
ideology behind it.  Instead of noticing the similarities between these 
American Muslims and other Americans, people choose to see them as players 
in the good vs. evil game, in which Muslims are undoubtedly considered the 
bad guys.


_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com