what is the clash of civilizations thesis

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The Clash of Civilizations

Learn about this topic in these articles:, discussed in biography.

…he argued in the controversial The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) that conflict between several large world civilizations was replacing conflict between states or ideologies as the dominant cleavage in international relations. Although he cautioned against intervention in non-Western cultures in The Clash of Civilizations ,…

political systems analysis

…in 1993 and a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , published in 1996, used cultural theory to propose that the emerging international system constituted a “clash of civilizations.” Several civilizations, each based mostly on religion, variously clashed and cooperated. The worst clashes, he argued, took…

view of globalization

scientist Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations (1998), comprises an elite group of highly educated people who operate in the rarefied domains of international finance, media, and diplomacy. Named after the Swiss town that began hosting annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in 1971, these “Davos” insiders…

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Huntington’s Clash Revisited

By David Brooks

March 3, 2011

Samuel Huntington was one of America’s greatest political scientists. In 1993, he published a sensational essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations?” The essay, which became a book, argued that the post-cold war would be marked by civilizational conflict.

Human beings, Huntington wrote, are divided along cultural lines Western, Islamic, Hindu and so on. There is no universal civilization. Instead, there are these cultural blocks, each within its own distinct set of values.

The Islamic civilization, he wrote, is the most troublesome. People in the Arab world do not share the general suppositions of the Western world. Their primary attachment is to their religion, not to their nation-state. Their culture is inhospitable to certain liberal ideals, like pluralism, individualism and democracy.

Huntington correctly foresaw that the Arab strongman regimes were fragile and were threatened by the masses of unemployed young men. He thought these regimes could fall, but he did not believe that the nations would modernize in a Western direction. Amid the tumult of regime change, the rebels would selectively borrow tools from the West, but their borrowing would be refracted through their own beliefs. They would follow their own trajectory and not become more Western.

The Muslim world has bloody borders, he continued. There are wars and tensions where the Muslim world comes into conflict with other civilizations. Even if decrepit regimes fell, he suggested, there would still be a fundamental clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. The Western nations would do well to keep their distance from Muslim affairs. The more the two civilizations intermingle, the worse the tensions will be.

Huntington’s thesis set off a furious debate. But with the historic changes sweeping through the Arab world, it’s illuminating to go back and read his argument today.

In retrospect, I’d say that Huntington committed the Fundamental Attribution Error. That is, he ascribed to traits qualities that are actually determined by context.

what is the clash of civilizations thesis

He argued that people in Arab lands are intrinsically not nationalistic. He argued that they do not hunger for pluralism and democracy in the way these things are understood in the West. But it now appears as though they were simply living in circumstances that did not allow that patriotism or those spiritual hungers to come to the surface.

It now appears that people in these nations, like people in all nations, have multiple authentic selves. In some circumstances, one set of identities manifests itself, but when those circumstances change, other equally authentic identities and desires get activated.

For most of the past few decades, people in Arab nations were living under regimes that rule by fear. In these circumstances, most people shared the conspiracy mongering and the political passivity that these regimes encouraged. But when the fear lessened, and the opportunity for change arose, different aspirations were energized. Over the past weeks, we’ve seen Arab people ferociously attached to their national identities. We’ve seen them willing to risk their lives for pluralism, openness and democracy.

I’d say Huntington was also wrong in the way he defined culture.

In some ways, each of us is like every person on earth; in some ways, each of us is like the members of our culture and group; and, in some ways, each of us is unique. Huntington minimized the power of universal political values and exaggerated the influence of distinct cultural values. It’s easy to see why he did this. He was arguing against global elites who sometimes refuse to acknowledge the power of culture at all.

But it seems clear that many people in Arab nations do share a universal hunger for liberty. They feel the presence of universal human rights and feel insulted when they are not accorded them.

Culture is important, but underneath cultural differences there are these universal aspirations for dignity, for political systems that listen to, respond to and respect the will of the people.

Finally, I’d say Huntington misunderstood the nature of historical change. In his book, he describes transformations that move along linear, projectable trajectories. But that’s not how things work in times of tumult. Instead, one person moves a step. Then the next person moves a step. Pretty soon, millions are caught up in a contagion, activating passions they had but dimly perceived just weeks before. They get swept up in momentums that have no central authority and that, nonetheless, exercise a sweeping influence on those caught up in their tides.

I write all this not to denigrate the great Huntington. He may still be proved right. The Arab world may modernize on its own separate path. But his mistakes illuminate useful truths: that all people share certain aspirations and that history is wide open. The tumult of events can transform the traits and qualities that seemed, even to great experts, etched in stone.

The Clash of Civilizations Thesis: A Critical Appraisal

This is an excerpt from Understanding Post-9/11 Afghanistan: A Critical Insight into Huntington’s Civilizational Approach . An E-IR Open Access Book by Deepshikha Shahi.

Available now on Amazon ( UK , USA , Ca , Ger , Fra ), in all good book stores, and via a free PDF download . Find out more about E-IR’s range of open access books here .

The tension between theory and the ‘real world’ can produce a tendency to see the development of theory as a response to events in the world, with seemingly new phenomena requiring fresh theories – the most recent phenomena involving the end of the Cold War, the demise of bipolarity, and questions about the status of American hegemony. The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) awaited a new paradigm which could provide an outlook to delineate the picture of the newly emerging world politics after the end of the Cold War. Interestingly, various contending paradigms cropped up, most of these originating in the West – particularly in the US. The linkage is in fact significant as it demonstrates the knowledge-power relationship in international relations. If the US could disguise its empire building project and legitimise its aggressive foreign policy behaviour as a necessary defensive posture to contain the threat of communism and the USSR during the Cold War, it could not continue to do so after the collapse of USSR and the end of the Cold War. It was, therefore, in greater need than ever before of the legitimising discourses that many North American and European intellectuals of the right and liberal centre seemed eager to provide. [1] Of these legitimising discourses the one that earned the most attention was that of Samuel P. Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis. In fact, the proponents and critics of the his thesis have virtually created a ‘clash of scholarship’ in IR. This chapter aims at demonstrating the various dimensions of this clash of scholarship whilst adding a new dimension to it. It consists of three sections. The first section attempts to lay out the origin and character of Huntington’s thesis. The second section tries to categorise the various criticisms of it. Finally, the third section sets out to offer a psychological critique of the clash of civilizations thesis, thereby suggesting a nexus between ‘knowledge’ and ‘violence’.

Sketching the Origin and Character

Huntington called forth a paradigmatic shift to comprehend post-Cold War global politics as he held that the ‘inter-civilizational’ issues were replacing inter-superpower ones. [2] Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis endeavoured to offer a new paradigm of world politics, which in contrast to state-centric realist theory and the system dominated neo–realist model, focused on civilizational-cultural religious factors. [3] In his article, The Clash of Civilizations?, published in Foreign Affairs in Summer 1993 (later expanded in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order ), he laid down his basic propositions:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation States will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be battle lines of the future. [4]

Huntington claimed that the fault lines between civilizations stemmed from differences in social and political values. The civilizations had different values on the relations between God and man, the individual and group, the citizen and state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy. [5] Most of the arguments in the pages that followed relied on a vague notion of something Huntington called ‘civilization identity’ and the interaction among seven or eight major ‘civilizations’ of which the conflict between two of them, ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, got the lion’s share of his attention.

The article’s most controversial statement came when Huntington demonised Islam by suggesting a linkage between Islam and violence. He wrote,

In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent shaped Islamic block of nations from the bulge of Africa to Central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims on the one hand, and orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders. [6]

Huntington enumerated six causes of intra-Islamic and extra-Islamic violence. Militarism, indigestibility , or less adaptability, and proximity to non-Muslim groups, explained the Muslim conflict propensity throughout history while anti-Muslim prejudice , absence of core state in Islam and demographic explosion in Muslim societies were held responsible for Muslim violence in the late twentieth century. [7]

The most remarkable portion of Huntington’s thesis dealt with policy recommendations. With regard to US domestic policy Huntington emphasised upon the need for tightening immigration and assimilating immigrants and minorities so as to increase civilizational coherence. He favoured Americanisation and denounced multiculturalism, as it weakened the American creed. Huntington’s guidelines on US foreign policy pressed the importance of maintaining Western technological and military superiority over other civilizations, non-interference in the affairs of other civilizations, empowering Atlantic partnership between US and Europe, limiting the expansion of Islamic–Confucian states, and exploiting the difference between these two civilizations. [8] The provocative thoughts underlying Huntington’s thesis drew massive criticism.

Categorising the Critique

The criticisms of the clash of civilizations thesis can categorised under three headings – epistemological, methodological and ethical . The epistemological critique condemns the clash of civilizations thesis on grounds of its realist, orientalist and elitist outlook. The methodological critique attacks its monolithic, inconsistent and reductionist/essentialist attitude while the ethical critique denounces it for being a purposeful thesis that fuels enemy discourse and, in the process, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Epistemological Critique

The epistemological critique problematises the very source of Huntington’s thesis in three ways. Firstly, it claims that the clash of civilizations thesis does not come up with a new paradigm since it neatly fits into political realism. [9] Huntington’s emphasis on the ever-present probability of war between civilizations represents a fear that is deeply rooted in political realism. The Machiavellian advice of Huntington to exploit the difference between Islamic and Confucian civilizations can only be considered within the realist realm. [10] According to Muhammad Asadi, the clash of civilizations thesis is dismantled historically as soon as we realise that it is nothing new. It is the same Cold War methodology rebranded for maximum impact, a contrived clash that the US was pursuing for several decades by converting an old ally into foe post-World War Two. This repackaging for a new era was necessary because the old enemy, the Soviet Union, no longer existed. Hans Kung contends that Huntington follows a bloc based Cold War mentality where war is considered crucial for maintaining the West’s technological and military superiority. [11] In a similar vein, G. John Ikenberry, Rubenstein and Crocker assert that Huntington proclaims the slogan – long live the Cold War! [12]

Secondly, the epistemological critique argues that the clash of civilizations thesis is orientalist. It claims that the language of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is embedded in Huntington’s thesis. Edward W. Said claims that the ‘epistemology of othering’ underlying Huntington’s thesis is problematic as labels, generalisations and cultural assertions are finally inadequate. He further argues that it is simpler to make bellicose statements for the purpose of mobilising collective passions than to reflect, examine, and sort out what it is we are dealing with in reality, the interconnectedness of innumerable lives, ‘ours’ as well as ‘theirs’. [13] This oriental scholarship perceives Islam as a threat to the West. [14] The act of perceiving the ‘other’ as a ‘threat’ rather than a ‘challenge’ leads to a siege mentality generated by Western hubris. [15] Manochehr Dorraj raises objections over the reification, distortion and dehumanisation of the Muslims produced by the clash of civilizations thesis. [16] Said opines that the ‘fictional gimmick’ constructed by such an orientalist approach is better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for any critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.

Thirdly, the epistemological critique finds fault with the elitist orientation of the clash of civilizations thesis. It argues that Huntington’s thesis is an ‘official mythology’ generated by US elites to ‘scare the hell out of the American people’, as ex-US Senator Vanderbilt put it. Therefore, the agenda of US elites differs from that of the American masses. Interestingly, the clash of civilizations rhetoric is not limited to American and European elites – many al-Qaida militants also view the current US-led conflicts in the Middle East as a proof of clash between Islam and the West. [17] Oliver Roy admits that Huntington is regularly accused of having introduced the concept of the clash of civilizations, but this approach is also shared by fundamentalists and conservative Muslims. [18] Gilles Kepel points out that Ayman al-Zawahiri’s text Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner presents a worldview comparable, but in reverse, to Huntington’s thesis. Zawahiri’s book is a jihadist reading of the clash of civilizations. [19] These observations compelled Michael Dunn to conclude that the clash of civilizations is an essential form of discourse for two powerful groups of elites – the Western policymakers and the leaders of the al-Qaida network. Benjamin Barber further highlights the gap between the agenda of elites and masses in the Islamic world by stating that hyperbolic commentators like Huntington have described the current divide in the world as a clash of civilizations, but this is to ape the messianic rhetoric of Osama bin Laden, who called for precisely such a war. The difference between bin Laden’s terrorists and the poverty-stricken constituents he tries to call to arms, however, is the difference between radical Jihadist elites and ordinary men and women concerned with feeding their children and nurturing their religious communities. [20] Thus, the real clash is not between the civilizations but between the elites and the masses over the definition of reality. Said calls it the ‘clash of ignorance’.

Methodological Critique

The methodological critique condemns Huntington’s thesis on three grounds. Firstly, it objects to the monolithic conception of civilizations which neglects the polycentric structure of both worlds. [21] Fred Halliday argues that Huntington ignores the internal dynamics, plurality and myriad complexities of Islam and the Muslim world. [22] Aijaz Ahmad asserts that there is no single Islamic culture, but multiple centres of Islam and various types of political Islam and Islamism in the Muslim world. [23] Ibrahim Kalin calls for deconstructing the monolithic perceptions of Islam and the West. [24] The existence of numerous conflicts within civilizations and cooperation between civilizations refutes the monolithic orientation of Huntington’s thesis. For instance, M.E. Ahrari asks Huntington as to how Iraqi and Turkish treatment of Kurds can demonstrate civilizational unity and coherence? [25] Shireen T. Hunter cites the case of Turkey’s strategic relations with Israel in the 1990s, when its relations with the Arab world and Iran were generally problematic. [26]

Secondly, the methodological critique pinpoints the inconsistencies in Huntington’s thesis. It disagrees with the selective perception and overgeneralization involved in Huntington’s reading of history. For instance, Fouad Ajami contends that the Gulf War is a case for ‘clash of state interest’ rather than ‘clash of civilizations’. [27] Similarly Hunter criticises Huntington’s portrayal of the Armenian–Azerbaijan conflict as a civilizational clash since Muslim Iran had more friendly relations with Christian Armenians, than with Muslim Azerbaijan. Robert Marks is dissatisfied with the fact that Huntington mostly uses secondary sources in his book and shows a weak scholarship of Islam, China, and Japan. [28] Seizaburo Sato raises objections over the illogicality of Huntington’s thesis since he makes Russia the core state of Slavic Orthodox civilization yet advises that Russia should be brought into the EU. Sato further raises the question as to why Huntington suggests setting Japan against potential Islamic Confucian alignment, when he defines Japan as an economic threat to the West? [29] The critics find Huntington’s thesis confusing as he uses the term ‘religion’, ‘culture’, and ‘civilization’ interchangeably.

Thirdly, the methodological critique attacks the reductionist / essentialist tone of the thesis in two senses: First, it reduces the multiple causes of inter-and intra-national conflict, thereby essentialising the civilizational factor as the prime reason. Second, it reduces the multiple dimensions of individual identity, thereby essentialising the civilizational factor as the chief aspect.

The scholars who refute the essentialisation of a civilizational cause of conflict include Noam Chomsky, Fouad Ajami, Shireen T. Hunter and James Kurth. Chomsky accepts that there is clash between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’. However, he opines that the West is in clash with those who are adopting the preferential option for the poor no matter who they are. They can be Catholics (in Latin America) or Communists (in Afghanistan). Chomsky refers to Charles Tilly to assert that over the last millennium,

Western states have been ruthlessly at war because of a central tragic fact that coercion works. Those who apply substantial force to their fellows get compliance, and from that compliance draw multiple advantages of money, goods, deference, and access to pleasures denied to less powerful people. [30]

Fouad Ajami complains that Huntington overestimates the cultural differences between civilizations and underestimates the influence of the West in hostile relations with the Muslim world. Shireen T. Hunter and Muhammad Asadi point out that the conflictive relations between the West and the Muslim world hardly stems from civilizational differences but from structural-political and economic inequalities between the two worlds of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. [31] James Kurth presents a more complicated picture that the real clash is not between the West and the rest, as Huntington assumes, but between pro-Western conservatives and post-Western liberal multiculturalists in the West itself. [32]

The scholars who denounce the essentialisation of the civilizational aspect of individual identity include Amartya Sen and Achin Vanaik. Sen refuses it as it ignores the multiple dimensions of identity that overlap across the so-called civilizational boundaries, while Achin Vanaik rejects it as it overlooks the dynamic and historically contingent nature of the inter-relationship between civilization, culture, and identity. Sen, in his book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny , expresses the view that the difficulty with Huntington’s approach begins with his system of unique categorization. He claims that the thesis of a civilizational clash is conceptually parasitic on the commanding power of a unique categorisation along so-called civilizational lines, which closely follows religious divisions, to which singular attention is paid. Sen warns that the increasing failure to acknowledge the many identities that any person has and to try to firmly place the individual into rigid boxes, essentially shaped by a pre-eminent religious identity, is an intellectual confusion that can cause dangerous divisiveness. An Islamist instigator of violence against infidels may want Muslims to forget that they have identities other than being Islamic. What is surprising for Sen is that those who would like to quell that violence promote, in effect, the same intellectual disorientation by seeing Muslims primarily as members of an Islamic world. According to Sen, the people of the world can be classified on the basis of many other partitions: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and so on. Sen believes that the world is made much more incendiary by the single-dimensional categorisation of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with an increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence.

Achin Vanaik, in his book The Furies of Indian Communalism , provides a sophisticated understanding of the concept of ‘civilization’, ‘culture’, and ‘identity’ as against the over-simplistic notions entertained by Huntington. He accounts for two types of civilizational studies. The first is a transhistorical and culturally essentialist reading of the enduring impact of some initial civilizational entity or root. The second is a historically well rounded study where civilization is seen as a network of specific historical, geographical, economic, political, cultural and social complexes, and not primarily as transhistorical cultural complexes. Such civilizations follow the pattern of emergence, rise, decline, and fall. In such an approach, it is difficult to talk – as Huntington does – of any specific civilization, let alone of many such civilizations existing through millennia. [33]

Vanaik further argues that the concept of culture bears a dual connotation – essence and process. [34] Many a twentieth century civilization theorist of Weberian cast saw civilizations as ‘cultural visions’ that have soul, spirit, ethos, or mentalité , which remain basically unaltered. Here, culture is understood as an essence. By contrast, in a more materialist rendering of civilization which pays more attention to the problems of cultural transmission, the virtual isomorphism of culture is averted. Here, culture is viewed as a process. Vanaik continues that throughout modern Western intellectual history, there have been significant contestations of the cultural approach to the study of civilizations, an insistence that change is as basic as continuity to the cultural dimension of the civilization entity in question, and that the continuity of political structures may often better explain the continuity of the cultural tradition itself. Such an understanding wholly rejects Huntington’s insistence on religion being the determining component of culture. As opposed to the idea of religious resurrection proposed by Huntington, Vanaik demonstrates how there is an increasing desirability and possibility of a decline of religion as the space occupied by it is shrinking in modern societies. He admits that humans must have identity for psychological wellbeing and stability, however this need for identity now exists more for personal-social, rather than for cosmic-meaning reasons. Therefore, religious identity, per se , is neither inescapable, nor essential. [35]

Ethical Critique

The ethical critique condemns the immoral implications of Huntington’s thesis. It proclaims that the clash of civilizations is a purposeful thesis that serves particular interests. Edward W. Said revealed that Huntington formulated his thesis while keeping an eye on rivals in the policy making ranks, theorists such as Francis Fukuyama and his ‘end of history’ idea, as well as the legions who had celebrated the onset of globalism and the dissipation of the states. Naz Wasim confirms that Huntington’s thesis was a strategy to influence US foreign and defence policy. [36] In this regard, Hans Kung pinpoints the fact that Huntington was an advisor to the Pentagon in 1994.

Interestingly the personal ambition of Huntington was in tandem with the expansionary goals of US policy makers. The declaration of a possibility of World War III by Huntington fit well with the needs of the US arms industry. Noam Chomsky highlights that every year the White House presents to Congress a statement describing reasons for having a huge military budget. For fifty years, it used the pretext of a Soviet threat. However, after the end of the Cold War, that pretext was gone. Therefore, Huntington constructed the Islamic threat as a pretext to justify the need for maintaining and enhancing the defence-industrial base. [37] Thus, Huntington’s thesis is in fact an enemy discourse that looks for new enemies. Muhammad Asadi further adds that Huntington’s thesis serves two purposes. First, it enables the extraction of manpower and funds from the American people for the ulterior motives of American elites. Second, it alters the agenda of the rest of the world, particularly the underdeveloped part of it, away from domestic issues, and towards conducting America’s wars. [38]

The ethical critique also asserts that Huntington’s thesis is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It causes the expected event to occur, and thus, verifies its own accuracy. John Ikenberry says that Huntington’s thesis is the civilizational equivalent of the security dilemma, in which misperception about the other eventually increases tension, and then leads to conflict. He feels that if the ideas of prominent thinkers have any impact on the real world, then the clash of civilizations thesis is potentially dangerous. [39] Amartya Sen, in a letter to Robert Kagan, expressed similar apprehension by stating that the violent tendency within Islam is not only because of the ‘pull’ of resurgent Islam, but also due to the ‘push’ of distancing coming from the Western parochialism that characterises Huntington’s thesis. [40]

The validity of all these criticisms was proved to a considerable extent by several empirical studies. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart used the World Values Survey database to compare the social and political values of Western and Muslim societies and concluded that Muslims have no less democratic ideals than the West. [41] Manus I. Mildarsky similarly found that there was no negative association between Islam and democracy. [42] Bruce Russet, John Oneal, and Michaelene Cox investigated inter-state disputes between 1885 to 1994 to conclude that it is not the civilizations, but the traditional realist and liberal variables – geography, power alliances, democracy, economic interdependence, and international organisation – that define the fault lines along which international conflict is apt to occur. [43]

Though the critiques of Huntington’s thesis point out its various flaws, they are much weaker when it comes to explaining its receptivity. This is not just amongst decision-makers and shapers, but also amongst the general population. It is to this point that the discipline of psychology can provide a critical insight.

Designing a Psychological Critique

Despite the copious criticisms targeting Huntington’s epistemology, methodology and ethics – the clash of civilizations thesis flourishes throughout the globe. Any attempt to check this trend requires a serious probing into the issue of how people become so receptive to such a provocative body of knowledge. In other words, how does a provocative idea, like Huntington’s thesis, interact with the psyche of the people, so as to transform them into its agents?

In this regard, Philip G. Zimbardo notes that the process by which hostile schemas, aggressive scripts and other types of knowledge structures are activated is a cognitive one that can – with practice – become completely automatic and operate without awareness. [44] As such, the easy receptivity of Huntington’s thesis can be grasped by decoding its cognitive role. A more detailed account of the psychic dimension of knowledge structures can be traced in the work of Ilan Gur Zeev. He claims that the control of the legitimisation, production, representation, and distribution of knowledge makes possible the reduction of human beings into ‘subjects’, who then function as the agents of that knowledge structure. He refers to such a control as ‘normalised education’ and explains that this normalised education commands the psyche of the subjects on four levels: (1) Control of the psychic constitution and strivings of the subjects; (2) Control of the conceptual apparatus and its integration with the psychic level of the subjects; (3) Control of the collective and private self-consciousness of the subjects; (4) Control of the functions of the subjects in order to minimise the possibilities for change in the representation of reality that normalised education reflects and serves. [45] These insights support the inference that Huntington’s thesis acquires receptivity by controlling the psyche of the people in a way that any normalised education does.

Keith Lehrer further elaborates upon the psychological functioning of an accepted knowledge structure. He states that the acceptance of knowledge is a sort of mental state that has a specific functional role, in thought, inference, and action. [46] He claims that when a person accepts a body of knowledge, then the person will apply it in the appropriate circumstances and use it to justify other conclusions. Such a person will reason and act in a certain manner assuming the truth of that body of knowledge. In this regard, Huntington’s thesis can be viewed as an accepted body of knowledge that thrives upon its ability to mould the reasoning and actions of people in a restrictive manner.

The academic discipline of psychology can serve as a lens through which the nature and warrants of Huntington’s thesis can be seen, and its subterfuges and destructive forces can be perceived. Psychology broadly offers three models for studying human behaviour – psychoanalytic, behaviouristic and humanistic-existential. Each of these models can be utilised for evaluating the receptivity of Huntington’s thesis. Since each model is rooted in a distinct philosophical tradition and relies on a distinct methodology, they provide a distinct understanding of the psychological mediation involved in the translation of the aggressive claims of Huntington’s thesis into violent outcomes. However, this study holds the opinion that the humanistic-existential model is more appropriate as it has a methodological edge over the other models.

Psychoanalytic Model

The first use of the term ‘psychoanalysis’ was made by Freud in 1896 in his paper entitled Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neurosis. [47] The basic tenet was a deterministic theory of human behaviour based on the laws of the mind. For Freud, psychoanalysis was aimed at discovering the functioning of the unconscious. His functionalist approach was two-fold: one level was concerned with inherent instincts and the other level was concerned with the psychic mechanism of displacement . [48] First, it proposed that there is an inherent instinct in human beings that is destructive and moves towards self-destruction. Freud described it as the opposite to the principle of Eros, and called it Thanos – the death wish. Second, it is proposed that individuals displace emotions, frustration and aggression – which are essentially part of their private emotional lives – away from their personal relationships and project them into political life. The themes of sex and aggression are interlinked in Freudian literature. [49]

Freud assigned a specific role to civilization and religion under his twofold approach. Firstly, since instinctual aggression is a hard reality of life, which the civilised society finds a bitter pill to swallow – religion is discovered as the future of an illusion. Religion promises happiness after death as a compensation for the renunciation of instinctual aggression in this life. [50] Karl Jung concludes that instead of a blissful feeling of merger with a literal God (conventionally a religious experience), religion can be an inward connection to one’s psyche. [51] Secondly, since there is a psychic mechanism of aggression displacement at work, the institutionalised civilization or religion binds together a considerable number of people in love so long as there are people of other civilizations or religions who receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness. Rene Girard claims that religion offers a fantasy system to enact immensely violent acts in a sacrosanct manner to preserve order in society. [52]

This psychoanalytic understanding of civilization can help to comprehend the basic appeal of Huntington’s thesis. Huntington’s categorisation of the global population along so-called civilizational lines mainly focuses on religious divisions. Since people are, by and large, religious and they experience ‘religion’ and ‘violence’ as yoked together, they find the idea of civilizational clash somewhat attractive and normal.

However, the psychoanalytic model becomes problematic as it is not compatible with certain assertions of Huntington’s thesis. For instance, the psychoanalytic image of religion as an ‘illusion’ or ‘fantasy system’ is universal in terms of applicability. Thus, Huntington’s act of singling out Islam as the most perverse form of religion that particularly breeds demons is objectionable. The motivation for religiously driven murderous zeal can be traced in radical extremists, not only among Muslims, but certainly among Christians and Jews, as well. Moreover, since the inherently aggressive instinct is universal, there may be a considerable number of people who do not believe in religion but are violent. Furthermore, there may be people who do not consciously or unconsciously practice religion for the purpose of suppressing or releasing their violent instincts.

The psychoanalytic model became obsolete as its traditional method of introspection was opposed by the movement of positivism, objectivism and empiricism that became a zeitgeist by the end of the nineteenth century. The early twentieth century saw the rise of behaviourism which stood for the use of the experimental method of the natural sciences.

Behaviouristic Model

This model was born in 1913 with a paper written by J.B. Watson entitled Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It. The basic maxim was the positive correlation between stimulus and response . Conclusions derived from animal experiments were applied to study human behaviour. The first classic experiment was carried out by Ivan Pavlov, wherein a dog was repeatedly presented with food and sound simultaneously. Consequently, the sound acquired the strength of food and created saliva in a dog’s mouth even in the absence of food. The dog had developed a conditioned reflex . [53] In 1914 Pavlov discovered that a neurosis-like symptom can be developed in dogs by disturbing the conditioned reflex. In an experiment a dog was conditioned to discriminate between a circle and an ellipse. The ellipse was then gradually modified to look more and more like a circle. The dog failed to discriminate and showed great discomfort and tension. It tore off the experimental apparatus and exhibited signs of nervous breakdown or ‘experimental neurosis’.

In the light of the conclusions derived from Pavlov’s experiments, Huntington’s thesis can be viewed as a stimulus that provokes violent response in both Muslim and Western societies. Within Muslim society it works in two ways. Firstly, it functions as a conditioning mechanism that repeatedly demonises Muslims, thereby psychologically compelling them to act as such. Secondly, it works as an irritant that disturbs the traditionally conditioned reflexes of Muslims by insulting them for how they have always been. The discrimination between the Islamic notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as it traditionally occurs to Muslim minds, is deeply distorted by Huntington’s thesis, which in turn fuels violent tendencies.

If Huntington’s thesis presents an inferior picture of Islam, it projects a superior image of the West, thereby stimulating an aggressive response from the West to assert and safeguard its abnormally elevated pride. The net result of this deliberate construction of a gulf between the respective self-esteem of Islam and the West is a sort of academic warfare which can be witnessed by the development of a counter-thesis in response to the clash of civilizations thesis of Huntington. Gilles Kepel in his book The War for Muslim Minds portrays Ayman al-Zawahiri’s text Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner as a jihadist reading of the clash of civilizations. Michael Dunn refers to the popularity of these texts in the Muslim world and reveals that these texts are developed as an essential form of discourse by two powerful groups of elites – the Western policymakers and the leaders of the al-Qaida network – in order to infuriate the masses.

The behaviouristic model was further enriched when Pavlov’s experiments found an extension in the work of B.F. Skinner, J.B. Watson and E.L. Thordike. They conducted learning experiments where response occurred without a visible stimulus – similar to what often happens in real life situations. For instance, Skinner placed a food-deprived rat in a box, which then accidently pressed a lever that released a food pellet. The rat in Skinner’s experiment had to operate upon the environment, unlike the dog in Pavlov’s experiment which did nothing to obtain the food. These learning experiments emphasised the role of environment and started a trend which shifted the biological orientation of psychology to a socio-cultural one. Neo-Freudians like Adler, Horney, Fromm and Marcuse argued in a Marxist vein that the demand for repression of instincts comes from the alienating socio-economic structure of a society, unlike the Freudian understanding where repression is a protective ego-defence created by the individual. [54]

This neo-Freudian/Marxist line of argument suggests that the notion of civilizational clash wins acceptance because it reflects the aspirations of rich people in the West and the destitute people of the Muslim world, who find themselves at war with each other due to their location within a particular socio-cultural circumstance. As such, the acceptability of the idea of civilizational clash should be perceived as a symptom of socio-economic deprivations faced by Muslims in the context of global capitalist insecurity.

However, the behaviouristic model also becomes disputable as it fails to adequately deal with certain aspects of Huntington’s thesis. In addition, there are exceptions among elites, as well as masses, that neither believe in, nor respond to, the provocative stimulus unleashed by Huntington’s thesis. Moreover, a similar socio-cultural circumstance does not always ensure behavioural similarity. Responses to the same objective situation differ considerably from person to person, depending on each person’s social learning history (i.e. personality) and present state of mind (i.e. which knowledge structure is currently most accessible). [55] Therefore every rich American and every poor Muslim need not find a foe in each other.

The extremely restrictive explanation of human behaviour as a response to stimulus increasingly became unacceptable. Since behaviour will always be conditioned, it is only wise to condition it efficiently. But, shocked and appalled critics – sensing faint hints of fascism – wondered who will decide the goals of humanity? Who is to be trusted to carry out the proper conditioning? These worries paved the way for the humanistic–existential model of psychology that rejected both the savage image of man nourished by psychoanalysis as well as the robot image of man nurtured by behaviourism. It thereby attempted to find a middle ground between these two extreme positions.

Humanistic-Existential Model

This model focused on the uniqueness of human existence and provided maximum scope for human agency. It attempted to understand human needs as they stem from the conditions of existence. [56] However, this did not imply a total surrender to conditioning factors as an explanation of human behaviour. The emphasis on experience, stress on creativity, concern for dignity and allegiance to meaningful problems for study constituted its foundation stones. [57] It realised that the beautifully executed, precise, and elegant experiments of psychology, in at least half the cases, have nothing to do with enduring human problems. [58] Maslow lamented that psychology has been long obsessed with the deviant, the sick and the criminal, ignoring the normal. Laing further argued that the abnormal is indeed a sane person maladjusted in an insane society. [59] Thus, from the standpoint of human values, the abnormal is less crippled than the kind of normal person who has lost individuality in the process of adjustment in society. [60] Szasz asserted that the myth of mental illness is created by the society. [61] The standard psychiatric patient is an artefact of a standard psychiatrist and a standard mental hospital. In fact, human behaviour is exquisitely rational moving with subtle and ordered complexity towards the goals our organism is endeavouring to achieve. [62]

According to this model, a combination of two paradoxical forces determine human behaviour. The first is the free agency of the individual who is personally responsible for creating meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. The second is the compulsion of the conditions of existence that affects the individual’s willingness or unwillingness to create or believe in a particular set of meanings. From this perspective, Huntington’s thesis becomes agreeable because of two reasons. The first is Huntington’s willingness to generate a specific notion of reality and the second is the people’s choice to identify their own perception of reality with that notion. In other words, Huntington’s presentation of an imagined reality (i.e. false consciousness), which is fraught with a civilizational clash, becomes an actual reality (i.e. false real consciousness) only when people choose to internalise it and act, or react, upon it. [63] The purpose behind Huntington’s choice to present reality in a particular way and the people’s choice to accept it lies in their respective conditions of existence. In the given circumstance, the prospect of a civilizational clash serves the purpose of its believers, thereby enabling it to acquire a meaning even if it is utterly meaningless.

The discernments obtained from the humanistic-existential model forcefully challenge the authenticity of Huntington’s thesis. They reveal the disguised manipulative venture of Huntington who disregards the uniqueness of human existence by deliberately laying down the standards of a ‘truly civilised society’ and demonising those who fail to fit those standards, thereby manufacturing a myth of civilizational pathology.

Under the conditions of the post-Cold War world, the superficial concept of ‘bloody Islamic borders’ enabled Huntington to gain an influential position among US foreign policymakers who were desperately looking for an alarming sermon which could cover their aggressive policies under the mask of legitimate defensive action. Huntington’s intentional ignorance of the painful conditions of existence in Muslim societies and his attribution of their consequent frustration to a kind of civilizational-cultural-religious disorder gave a new meaning to persisting political issues. This new meaning served the purpose of its believers at many levels. Firstly, it helped US policymakers to divert the attention of both Muslims and non-Muslims away from the genuine suffering and the creative potential of the Islamic world, thereby facilitating an ensured American hegemony. Secondly, it allowed the fanatics in both Islamic and Western societies to enrage the masses, thereby paving the way for satisfying their personal ambitions.

Though Huntington’s dangerous motive becomes quite apparent as soon as he activates his abstract idea of ‘civilizational identity’ by awakening a hatred for other civilizations, it is well-received by the people who find it relevant and useful in their living conditions. [64] The cascading effect of the abstract idea of ‘civilizational identity’ totally obscures the complexity of human identity formation and thus weakens the effort at human emancipation. However, the humanistic-existential model is optimistic in its assertion that Huntington’s thesis acquires receptivity, not because it discloses some identifiable ultimate truth about innate human nature or emits provocative stimulations to which human beings are bound to succumb. The popularity of it is largely an outcome of the personal choice of human beings who are embedded in their respective conditions of existence as free agents.

As such, the issue of acceptance or rejection becomes a matter of free choice and the onus for exploring its harmful implications rest on free individuals. The essence of this insight can be traced in the following Zimbardo homily: While a few bad apples might spoil the barrel (filled with good fruit/people), a barrel filled with vinegar will always transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles – regardless of the best intentions, resilience and genetic nature of those cucumbers. So, does it make more sense to spend our resources on an attempt to identify, isolate and destroy the few bad apples or to learn how vinegar works so that we can teach cucumbers how to avoid undesirable vinegar barrels?

[1] Vanaik, Achin, 2007 Masks of Empire Tulika Books, p2.

[2] Huntington, Samuel P. November-December 1993 ‘If Not Civilizations, What?: Paradigms of the Post-Cold War World’, Foreign Affairs, pp.187-189.

[3] Three years before the arrival of Huntington’s thesis, Bernard Lewis talked about the clash of civilizations. See Lewis, Bernard September 1990 ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage: Why so many Muslims Deeply Resent the West and Why Their Bitterness Will Not be Easily Mollified’ The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 266, No. 3,pp 47-58.

[4] Huntington, Samuel P. Summer 1993 ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 21-49.

[6] Huntington, Samuel P. Summer 1993 ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 21-49.

[7] Huntington, Samuel P. 1996, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , Penguin, pp. 262-265.

[8] Huntington, Samuel P. November-December 1996 ‘The West Unique, Not Universal’, Foreign Affairs , p. 45.

[9] Rubenstein, Richard E. and Crocker, Jarle ‘Challenging Huntington’ Foreign Policy , No. 96 (Fall, 1994), pp 115-117.

[10] Hussein, Seifudein Adem 2001 ‘On the End of History and the Clash of Civilizations: A Dissenter’s View’ Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs , Vol. 21, NO. 1, p. 32.

[11] Kung, Hans ‘ Inter-Cultural Dialogue Versus Confrontation’ in Schmiegleow, Henrik (ed) 1999 Preventing the Clash of Civilizations: A Peace Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, St. Martin’s Press, p 103.

[12] Ikenberry , G. John March-April 1997 ‘Just Like the Rest,’ Foreign Affairs , p. 163 and Rubenstein, op.cit, p 117.

[13] Said, op.cit.

[14] Monshipouri, Mahmood and Petonito, Gina Autumn1995 ‘Constructing the Enemy in the Post-Cold War Era: The Flaws of the Islamic Conspiracy Theory’ Journal of Church and State , Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 773-792.

[15] Mahbubani, Kishore Summer 1992 ‘The West and the Rest’, National Interest, Issue 28, pp. 10-14.

[16] Dorraj, Manochehr December 1998, ‘In the Throes of Civilizational Conflict’, Peace Review , Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 633-637.

[17] Dunn, Michael Winter 2006-2007 ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the War on Terror’, 49 th Parallel , Vol. 20 available at http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue20/Dunn.pdf

[18] Roy, Oliver 2004 Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, Hurst and Company, p9.

[19] Kepel, Gilles 2004 The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, Belknap Press, p99.

[20] Barber, Benjamin 2003 Jihad vs. Mcworld , Corgi, p.xv.

[21] See the book review of the Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Richard Rosecrance December 1998 American Political Science Review , Vol. 92, No. 4, p978-980.

[22] Halliday , Fred 1996 Islam and the Myth of Confrontation , St. Martin’s Press,p 217.

[23] Ahmad, Aijaz 2008 ‘Islam, Islamisms and the West’, Socialist Register available at http://www.iran-bulletin.org/political%20islam/SR_08_Ahmad_0.pdf

[24] Kalin, Ibrahim 2001 ‘Islam and the West: Deconstructing Monolithic Perceptions-A Conversation With Professor John Esposito’ Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs , Vol. 21, No. 1, pp 155-163.

[25] Ahrari, M.E., Spring 1997 ‘The Clash of Civilizations: An Old Story or New Truth?’, New Perspectives Quarterly , Vol. 14. No. 2, pp 56-61.

[26] Hunter, Shireen T. 1998 The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence?, Praeger, p 169.

[27] Ajami, Fouad, September-October 1993 ‘The Summoning’ Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 4, pp 7-8.

[28] See the book review of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Robert Marks Spring 2002 Journal of World History, Vol. 11, No.1, pp101-104.

[29] Sato, Seizaburo October 1997 ‘The Clash of Civilizations: A View from Japan’, Asia Pacific Review 4, pp. 7-23.

[30] Sridhar, V., November 24 – December 7 2001 ‘Chomsky in India’, Frontline, Vol. 18, No. 24, available at http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1824/18240230.htm

[31] Hunter, op.cit, pp19-20.

[32] Kurth, James Summer 2001 ‘American and the West: Global Triumph or Western Twilight ?’, Orbis , pp. 333-341.

[33] Vanaik, Achin 1997 The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization, Verso, pp 130-137.

[34] Achin Vanaik endorses Raymond Williams’ dynamic vision of culture as a process rather than a static view of culture as a ‘class of things, shared’ or a ‘state of affairs’ because the former is more fit for modern societies. For details see Williams, Raymond 1981 Culture, Fontana Press.

[35] Vanaik, op.cit, pp 65-129.

[36] Wasim, Naz ‘Challenging Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations: The Shared Tradition of Europe, and Islam’ in International Conference on the Dialogue of Civilizations, 31 July to 3 August, 2001 available at http://www.unu.edu/dialogue/conf-report.pdf

[37] http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/509/509%20noam%20chomsky.htm

[38] Asadi, op.cit.

[39] Ikenberry, op.cit, pp 162-163

[40] Amartya Sen, letter to Robert Kagan, ‘Is there a Clash of Civilizations?’, Slate Magazine ,

(Posted Friday, May 5, 2006, at 11:52 PM).

[41] Norris, op.cit, pp 11-12.

[42] Mildarsky, Manus I. 1998 ‘Democracy and Islam: Implication for Civilization Conflict and the Democratic Peace’, International Studies Quarterly , Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 485-511.

[43] Russet, Bruce (et.al) September 2002 ‘Clash of Civilizations or Realism and Liberalism Deja Vu? Some Evidence’, Journal of Peace Research , Vol. 378, No. 5, pp 583-608.

[44] Zimbardo, Philip G. 2004 ‘A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil’ in Miller, Arthur G.(ed.) The Social Psychology of Good and Evil, Guilford Publications, pp 178-182.

[45] Michael A. Peters. 2015 Education, Globalization and the State in the Age of Terrorism, Routledge, p. 233.

[46] Lehrer, Keith 2000 Theory of Knowledge, Westview Press, pp 39-40.

[47] Singh, Amar Kumar December 1998 ‘The Concept of Man in Psychology’, Social Change, Vol.28, No.4, p. 6.

[48] Bloom, William 1990 Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations, Cambridge, pp 7-8.

[49] Freud, Sigmund 1953 Civilization and its Discontents , Hogarth Press, p 85. (originally published in 1930).

[50] Freud, Sigmund 1961 Future of an Illusion , Hogarth Press (originally published in 1927).

[51] Piven, Jerry S. 2002 ‘On the Psychosis (Religion) of Terrorists’ in Stout, Chris E. (ed) The Psychology of Terrorism Vol. III, Praeger , pp 119-140.

[52] Stirling, Mack, C. ‘Violent Religion: Rene Girard’s Theory of Culture’ in Ellens, op.cit, pp11-50.

[53] Pavlov, Ivan 1941 ‘ Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes’, Vol. 2: Conditioned Reflexes and Psychiatry translated and edited by W.H. Gantt, Lawrence and Wishart Ltd. available at http://www.heretical.com/pavlov/chap-50.html

[54] Singh, p.19.

[55] Zimbardo, p.177.

[56] Fromm, Eric 1955, The Sane Society , Fawcett Premier Books, pp 31-32.

[57] Buhler, C. and Allen M. 1972 Introduction to Humanistic Psychology , Brooks / Cole, pp1-2.

[58] Maslow, A. ‘A Philosophy of Psychology’ in Severin, F. (ed) 1965 Humanistic Viewpoints in Psychology, McGraw Hill, pp 17-33.

[59] Laing, Ronald D. 1967 The Politics of Experience, Ballantine, p. 58.

[60] Fromm, Eric P 1942 Fear of Freedom, Routledge, p 120.

[61] Szasz, T.S. 1960 ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ American Psychologist , Vol. 15, pp 113-118.

[62] Rogers, C.R. 1961 On Becoming a Person , Houghton Mifflin, p 194.

[63] Achin Vanaik uses the term ‘false real consciousness’ to suggest that any ideology that arouses ‘false consciousness’ does not posit a false world as an alternative to the real world, but a false way of experiencing and relating to the real world. See Vanaik, p.79.

[64] Huntington subscribes to Michael Dibdin’s idea, as expressed in his novel ‘Dead Lagoon’, that unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. See Huntington, Samuel P. 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , Penguin, p.20

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Revisiting S.P. Huntington’s ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ thesis

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The point of departure in this chapter is Niall Ferguson’s 2006 claim that ‘as works of prophecy go’ S.P. Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis has been ‘a real winner.’ This claim is examined in the light both of the persistent scholarly verdict that the thesis is deeply flawed, and its continued public and academic usage since it first appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. Given that the thesis is deemed to misrepresent, rather than capture, the tensions existing between Islam and the West now and into the future, why has it persisted as long as it has?

The burden of Huntington’s thesis is that future wars will be conducted by entire civilizations – though principally Islam and the West – and be driven largely by cultural differences at the fault-lines of contact between them. Huntington had proposed this as a model of international relations to replace the old Cold War paradigm that had ended with the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of Communism. His aim was to construct an equally simple model of global politics that could predict and explain the kind of conflict that would come to dominate international relations.

While Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ was denied paradigmatic status, this chapter considers aspects of his futurological model that he may have got right or partially right. This includes the key concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’, which he is credited with introducing to the study of international relations, and the ‘helpfulness’ of his thesis in accounting for the rise of populist far-right parties, particularly in Europe, and their growing electoral success. The early warning that Huntington provided of civilizational alienation between Muslims and Hindus on the subcontinent and the BJP’s agenda of turning India into a Hindu state is also looked at in the context of a regional case study of a civilizational ‘clash’ ostensibly well underway.

That Huntington’s thesis may also have derived a degree of reinforcement from the phenomenon of Islamist radicalization on the one hand, and the rise of Islamophobia on the other, is also explored. Reinforcement also comes in the form of Islamist narratives that conjure up an apocalyptic confrontation between Islam and the West, narratives that are constructed independently of Huntington’s, but in terms of doomsday scenarios run parallel with his.

The chapter ends by reflecting on the place where the ‘clash of civilizations’ has arrived, and currently occupies in the study of international relations.

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Exploring how religious and secular forces interact in the modern world.

Theorizing Modernities article

Why are we still talking about the “clash of civilizations” anne norton and the search for the andalusias of modernity.

The Long Legacy of Bad Scholarship

Why does a case of bad scholarship remain so pivotal for discussions of religion and modernity, specifically concerning Muslims and Islam, in the contemporary moment? The “ clash of civilizations ” thesis is a construct that Samuel Huntington did not invent but did popularize, and it is no doubt an example of bad scholarship. Huntington sits comfortably in a genealogy that includes Bernard Lewis in the twentieth century and Ernest Renan in the nineteenth century. Further, his scholarship is but another example of shoring up the power of European states under the guise of “objective scholarship.” As Dipa Kumar has shown, the vilification and othering of Islam during the time when European empires were expanding consolidated an air of Christian secular/modern superiority. Kumar’s materialist analysis underscores and traces how the othering of Muslims during this time also entailed their racialization: “the political economy of empire…creates the conditions for anti-Muslim racism, and Islamophobia sustains empire” (24). For Kumar, “anti-Muslim racism [is] a product of empire” and the “normal modality of imperial domination” (not only the right-wing fringe) with which the construction of “free” liberal societies in the west is constituted. Norton, for her part, reaffirms Kumar’s point that Islamophobia is not about religious intolerance but rather about racism (31) and thus requires anti-racist praxis rather than depoliticized interfaith dialogue. Norton’s book constitutes a robust addition to the genre of scholarship that contests the “clash of civilizations” thesis.

There is good reason for this continued response. There are still many in the academy and at think tanks and other sites of cultural production who affirm Huntington’s racist and jingoistic argument. This argument first seeks to attribute the causes of violence ahistorically to cultural identities, and second, argues—with all the empirical pretenses of social science—for the normative superiority of the “west.” The latter is a construct associated with modernity and secularity, which we should understand not as part of a binary of the religious and secular but rather as a politico-theological settlement. Elizabeth Shakman-Hurd exposes this settlement in Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion .

Norton’s book constitutes a robust addition to the genre of scholarship that contests the “clash” of civilizations” thesis.

Norton’s book captures how the “Muslim Question” is deployed, by whom it is deployed, and the purposes it serves specifically in Euro-American cases. Sexual politics , whether veiling, unveiling, or queering , is evident on all fronts where a civilizational logic of othering Muslims is deployed. Norton’s book illuminates the dynamics of sexual politics and how they operate to exclude, securitize, and otherize Muslims. As I demonstrate by drawing on my encounters with Huntington below, this thesis continues to hold a grip on conversations about Islam in the US academy, even as those who oppose it try to imagine new possibilities beyond it. Following this discussion, I turn to the relationship between “the Jewish question” and the “Muslim question” to help us imagine those possibilities.

Grasping for Andalusias

Norton’s book is a compelling demolition of the persistent orientalism that has defined modernity and, specifically, the project of liberal political citizenship, which was born with western Christian colonialism. Under this project, attaining freedom and capital depended upon slavery, depopulation, exploitation, and genocide in colonial spaces. This is Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus which Walter Benjamin described as propelled by a destructive wind that piled up debris and suffering as it moved into the future. But the “progress” narrative conceals the debris—how it was caused and who caused it. Benjamin writes powerfully: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Norton’s book documents this barbarism.

But Norton’s book is also compelling for illuminating moments of interruption to this progressive and violent narrative. Like Benjamin’s concept of messianic time and his rejection of victors’ history of progress, Norton, to quote Benjamin, “seize[s] hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” This is the memory of Andalus, a moment in Spanish history where one can find “a Europe shaped by more than Christianity” (156). Norton continues: “All three faiths still live in Andalusia. They still mix. They still exchange people and ideas. Catholic schoolchildren on field trips pose at the feet of the statue of Maimonides. Modern Spaniards, like the Spaniards of the past, still move between the Abrahamic faiths” (157). Al-Andalus, Norton underscores, is not “a singular paradise, incomparable and lost” (157). Rather, there are other Andalusias that offer “alternative pasts and open to alternative futures” (157). One such Andalusia, Norton finds in Juha, a “gay Hawaiian Palestinian” band “that challenges not only the clash of civilizations thesis but the politics of sexuality” (200). Juha, for example, weaves Hawaiian kitsch with the traditional call for prayers (201). Another historical irruption is the graphic novel Cairo by G. Wilson and M. K. Perker. The latter, Norton notes, captures an Andalusia by tracing how “the enemy [an Israeli soldier] becomes the ally and friend” (207). Norton reads Cairo as retrieving and reimagining an “ancient, non-Western cosmopolitanism” which unsettles the self-righteous certainty (the progress narrative) of “the liberal model of prescriptive cosmopolitanism fielded by John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum” (208). Accordingly, Norton tells us that “[t]he novel challenges the rule of law as a transcultural panacea; it refuses the divide between sacred and secular that buttresses the ‘clash of civilization’ thesis” (208). Her aim here is not a conservative and reactionary one that would seek to reclaim a “golden age” before the script of European barbarity began to be written on the bodies of marked humans. Neither is her aim to recover a lost tradition destroyed by the imposition of liberal accounts of the law. Rather, she hopes to find in contemporary Andalusias a robust source for an anti-racist re-scripting of the secular. Another Andualisan indicator she highlights is Paul Gilroy’s concept of “conviviality,” which denotes a life together (196) where ordinary and “everyday projects of hybridity and synthesis” interrupt the ugly world that Huntington saw (196). Norton’s Andalusias are sites for reimagining the secular rather than romantic longing for past utopias. Unfortunately, the Huntington thesis is still haunting us and before moving too quickly to these alternatives, we must spend more time countering it.

Her aim here is not a conservative and reactionary one that would seek to reclaim a ‘golden age’ before the script of European barbarity began. . . . Rather, she hopes to find in the contemporary Andalusias a robust source for an anti-racist re-scripting of the secular.

I now turn to my own experience with Huntington to show how his thesis reflects an anti-Andalusian and ideological account of history, politics, and religious traditions. Here, I will highlight Norton’s discussion of the intimate relations between the “Muslim Question” and the “Jewish Question” in Christian European modernity. I will show how it unsettles, like the recovery and reimagining of Andalusias, the Huntingtonian ahistoricity and ideological differentiation between Jews and Muslims as the former become assimilated into Whiteness and the latter remain constructed as Europe’s other.

Haunting the Syllabus

Over twenty years ago, I was a graduate teaching fellow in Harvard University’s Religion and Global Affairs course. The course was typically co-taught by my dissertation advisor David Little, and then alternately by Jessica Stern and Michael Ignatieff as well as Monica Toft as a second professor. For at least three iterations of the course, it was also taught by Samuel Huntington. The late political scientist provoked and upset many students while he confirmed the biases and ideological stances of others. I was a teaching fellow for this course multiple times. Huntington haunted the syllabi in person or through his false and harmful thesis when he was not physically present. At a particularly memorable moment, he exclaimed, “the problem with all religion is sexual repression.” During that moment, he was referring to the sex scandal in the Catholic Church. Still, his proclamation was intended for all who see themselves as religious. A robust contingent of female Muslim students, some wearing hijabs and some without covering, erupted and demanded an apology. He did not offer one. He proclaimed that this was just a fact.

As a professor, I teach versions of this course today, and Huntington is still haunting and lurking in the background and foreground, although I never assign him. Instead, I have students read Edward Said’s critique of the original 1993 Foreign Affairs piece. Huntington’s piece offered policymakers the paradigm they needed when the Cold War framework was supposedly eroding. The same Huntington of the “clash of civilizations” then wrote a book that is highly consistent with the ideological thrust of the “clash.” In the book, he looked globally at the international system and blocks of civilizations (which he used interchangeably with religions) and claimed that inter-civilizational conflict needed to be managed because of the essential incompatibility of civilizations. This value reductionism is harmful as it robs people of their complex histories, politics, and social lives. In a later book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (2005), Huntington turns to a discussion of what he interprets as the religio-cultural forces threatening what he deems the “true” Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity (the tripartite Protestant, Catholic, Jewish frame ) of the US. What is unmistakable here is a tragic connection between the “Global War on Terrorism,” the securitizing of Muslims globally (including at mosques and community centers in places such as the UK, France, and the US), and the emergence of Trump. Indeed, the reactionary fear around the ontological security of the US, both in terms of its physical and ideological borders, is highly connected to the policies that Huntington’s thesis has informed, the xenophobic fear-mongering rhetoric it has fueled, and the simplistic ways in which it is so deeply ahistorical.

Over twenty years ago, in the classroom, we were preoccupied with 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Devastating events twenty years later, including a hurried and disorganized US withdrawal from this “graveyard of empires,” should have finally put this clash argument to rest and led to a reassessment of the horrific policies that informed the US in the aftermath of 9/11. Yet, this has not been the case, and given the previous years’ events, it is not surprising. Norton brilliantly takes the reader through an analysis of the torture and sexualized images that emerged from Abu Ghraib and what they signify. Here the “iconic” image of “a hooded prisoner standing on a box, his outstretched arms attached to electric wires” (181) evokes “religious images” but also one of the Klan: “the campaign against the Arab and the Muslim tried to identify Arabs and Islam with bigotry against Jews and Christians, and made the bigotry the license for invasion, war, and war crimes” (182). Indeed, this historic moment during an unjustified war—which built on the conflation of secularity with Christian democracy during the Cold War, the promotion of religious freedoms as a rhetorical weapon, and the “cleansing” of Christian Europe’s long legacy of antisemitism through its acquiescence and active support of Zionism—set the stage to pivot to anti-Muslim policies, securitizing racialized and gendered postcolonial Muslim subjects and bodies, and developing a set of policies called “countering violent extremism.” These policies were too large (and invested in) to fail even when analysts repeatedly concluded that the evidence did not support the ideological claims (as Lydia Wilson has shown). Indeed, it is not surprising that the sequel to Huntington’s “clash” was “who are we” because the securitizing of Muslims as part of the supposedly global war on terrorism directly relates to the consolidation of right-wing exclusionary ethnoreligious populist movements. These movements deploy civilizational language often through the registers of incompatibility between supposedly “Judeo-Christian values” and Islam.

What about the Jewish Question?

The emergence of racist right-wing populism in recent decades in multiple contexts—from France, Italy, and the Netherlands to the US and India—share an anti-Muslim racism that is often conveyed through the idioms of values, heritage, and religion (including laïcité). As I have already telegraphed, one of Norton’s most critical theoretical moves is to reconnect Europe’s “Jewish Question” with its “Muslim Question.” She shares this significant move with thinkers such as Yolande Jansen and Anya Topolsky , as well as Santiago Slabodsky and Gil Anidjar . This is an important move because it is an Andalusian interruption of the logic of the “clash” that assimilated (White) Jews into a civilizational discourse, as Slabodsky notes. It is an assimilation of the Jews into a Judeo-Christian construct that erases Jews and imposes violent supersessionism in the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Anidjar powerfully examines the Musselman in the death camps of Nazi Germany to explain the inextricable link between the Muslims and the Jews as Europe’s others . For Anidjar , 1492 and the Inquisition are significant points in the chronology. They denote the end of Andalusia and the beginning of the racialization of religious communities and their exclusion and targeting as a mechanism of proto-nationalism, the political project of modernity. Muslims and Jews were both targets of the Inquisition, which disrupted the interwoven socioreligious fabric of Spain.

Norton’s foregrounding of the Jewish Question in her discussion of the Muslim Question is a critical interruption of the ‘clash’ and connects with the constructive yet neither romantic nor utopian aspiration for an alternative Andalusian logic of the secular.

It is beyond the scope of this reflection to go into the historical work and contextualization of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish praxis and theologies in the formation of modernity. I’ll here only underscore that Norton shows how a certain amnesia about the “Jewish Question,” which is otherwise definitional of European modernity and the formation of secular conceptions of citizenship, obscures reality on the ground. Any discussion of the “Muslim Question” in isolation from the “Jewish Question” reflects an ideological move that must be resisted. Instead, what is necessary is an Andalusian frame or what Gil Hochberg has recently described as an “archive of the future,” where it is possible to identify messianic interruptions of violent narratives of history. This move is critical for finally pushing the “clash” out of our syllabi. Indeed, it is not so much an amnesic issue but rather a presumption that the “Jewish Question” was somehow solved with the establishment of Israel. Marc Ellis explains it in terms of an “ ecumenical pact” agreed to on the backs of Palestinian natives. This is the same Europe that created the skeleton Musslemann of the camps: the racialized bare life Jewish skeleton, nicknamed “Muslim,” who was clearly marked for imminent death by starvation. The problem with presuming that the Jewish Question has been solved is not only that it was “solved” on the back of Palestinians and through settler-colonial mechanisms, but also that it is nowhere to be found in anti-Muslim securitizing discourses. What is present is a vague appeal to Judeo-Christian civilizational roots, an appeal that itself telegraphs centuries of classical antisemitism. Here it is important to recall the Algerian French public intellectual Houria Bouteldja’s interpellation to the Jews to join the struggle and to leave behind their position as a “buffer people,” which leaves them operating under a persistently colonial logic. Hence, Norton’s foregrounding of the Jewish Question in her discussion of the Muslim Question is a critical interruption of the “clash” and connects with the constructive yet neither romantic nor utopian aspiration for an alternative Andalusian logic of the secular. I conclude by referring to Ebrahim Moosa’s profound point about being a critical traditionalist. What does it mean to be a critical traditionalist within the modern/secular world, but through an Andalusian frame?

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The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel P Huntington

Table of Contents

Last Updated on November 28, 2018 by Karl Thompson

Samuel P. Huntington sees ‘civilizations’ as the most significant grouping in global society, rather than ‘nation states’, or ‘global religions’, although there are often close relationships between religions and Huntington’s concept of ‘civilizations’.

Globalization has resulted in the world becoming a smaller place, which means that there are increasing interactions between ‘civilizations’, which intensifies ‘civilization consciousness’.

According to Huntington, increasing contact between civilizations often has the effect of emphasising differences rather than similarities, which can cause an increasing amount of conflict in the world.

What are ‘Civilizations’?

For Huntington, civilizations are ‘cultural entities’ differentiated from each other by history, language, cultural traditions and, most importantly, religion.

As Huntington sees is, sources of identity which are not based on religion have declined. Political identities matter less since the collapse of communism, and increasing international travel has weakened national identity, ‘civilizational identity’, based mainly on religion has stepped in to fill the gap.

Clashes between civilizations

Huntington believes that there will increasingly be clashes between civilizations, because these identities are based mainly on ethnicity and religion, and thus foster an ‘us and them’ type of identity.

Religion as a more significant cause of conflict…

At the moment, Western civilization is dominant, however, as the ‘Islamic’ and ‘Hindu’ civilisations develop more potent nuclear capabilities (Pakistan, India) and as the world shrinks further, this dominance is likely to decrease, which opens the possibility for more serious conflicts.

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What We Get Wrong About the Clash of Civilizations

Few arguments about the shape of the post-Cold War international system have been met with as much passion and debate as the one articulated in Samuel Huntington’s 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order . His core argument was that future conflicts would be shaped by cultural and civilizational differences rather than ideology. It seemed barbaric and out-of-touch during the 1990s, then all too prescient in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Yet until today, no administration has come close to embracing a Huntingtonian view of the world; both the Bush and Obama administrations rejected it, highlighting repeatedly that America was fighting violent extremists, not Islam itself.

Even as he took the oath of office, however, President Donald Trump committed to his campaign promise to explicitly link Islam and terror, using the Republican shibboleth “radical Islamic terrorism” in his inaugural address. [i] Many of the new president’s advisors appear to endorse a Huntingtonian view of the world, an impression confirmed by the administration’s earliest acts, executive orders which seek to reduce Muslim immigration and build a wall on the southern border.

Unfortunately, there is a key reason why prior administrations rejected Huntington’s worldview: it provides a remarkably poor guide to a complex world. Worse still, the way that Trump’s advisors appear to have absorbed Huntington’s work – by accepting his worldview, but not his policy recommendations – points to a particularly dangerous direction for U.S. foreign policy in the next four years.

Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations

Huntington’s argument itself is often oversimplified. After all, even the phrase The Clash of Civilizations is enough to form a rudimentary picture of a world of cultural strife. Yet Huntington was building on a much longer intellectual heritage, drawing from the writings of Toynbee, Bagby, and others. Huntington posited that, with the collapse of ideological struggle at the end of the Cold War, Western-style modernization is, in effect, the only game in town. Yet while Francis Fukuyama confidently predicted that this meant the ‘end of history’ was nigh, [ii] Huntington instead pointed to the growing salience of culture to argue that the wars of the future will be fought between civilizations. Indeed, for Huntington, culture was paramount. As he noted, cultural characteristics cannot be altered as easily as ideology, class, or other factors. [iii]

And while he made a few nods to balance-of-power considerations – he allowed that states may ally across civilizational lines when necessary – Huntington argued that future conflicts will be primarily found in civilizational borderlands and driven by opposition to Western economic and military dominance in the rapidly growing non-West. Many of the factors that he drew upon to build his argument are indisputable: the Western world is disproportionally wealthy, overrepresented in international institutions, and militarily powerful, though its dominance is declining. [iv] Too, his argument that economic modernization does not necessarily result in Western-style liberal democracy is all too apparent to observers of the failed Arab Spring. And there is likely something to his assertion that states which share a cultural background may be more likely to cooperate: similar arguments have been made by political scientists to explain alliances. [v]

But for all that Huntington’s theory is well grounded in philosophy and history, his empirical evidence is surprisingly weak. As Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out, most of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century took place within civilizations rather than between them. [vi] Huntington relied heavily on evidence from the 1990s, particularly conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf, arguing that involvement in these conflicts was mostly driven by civilizational “kin-rallying.” Yet these cases tend to be unconvincing. The period since 2001 seems to bear him out more effectively: opposition to the West in the Middle East is certainly growing. [vii] Yet conflict in the Muslim world over the last decade, most notably the Arab Spring, has also been driven by internal factors. Today’s civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen were shaped by the tension between modernization and westernization, and worsened by intracivilizational conflict among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other regional actors.

And while Huntington largely dismissed realist views of world politics, the events he cited – most notably resistance to Western global dominance – could as easily be explained as a process of realist balancing by rising powers like China against the global hegemon. Huntington was correct that both Russia and China have attempted to build larger regional alliances, whether ideological, economic, or military. Yet both have been unsuccessful: the states of Central Asia have repeatedly pursued multi-vector foreign policies, seeking ties with Europe, the United States, and China, not a recreation of Soviet-era economic and political ties. Meanwhile, under pressure from China, Asian states have sought closer defense ties with the United States, most notably Vietnam. In both cases, these dynamics suggest less cultural or civilizational ties between states, and more the reaction of small states concerned about a rising regional hegemon.

Many of the worst flaws of Huntington’s argument – oversimplifying complex dynamics and demeaning the role of power politics – are replicated by today’s proponents of his theory. Just as Huntington’s book tortuously attempted to fit the Gulf War into his civilizational paradigm, [viii] overlooking the fact that half the region sided with external actors to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, so today we see arguments which attempt to link all violent actors in the Islamic world as one, from the Muslim Brotherhood, to Al Qaeda, to Hezbollah. In his book Field of Fight, Trump’s new National Security Advisor Michael Flynn makes this argument, presenting fragmentary evidence of occasional opportunistic contact between Hezbollah and al Qaeda as proof that Sunni and Shi’a extremists form a coherent and committed axis of opposition to the United States. [ix] Occam’s razor suggests instead that it is possible for these groups to dislike each other as much as the United States, and to work against the West for independent reasons.

A Huntingtonian Administration?

Despite their flaws, Huntington’s ideas continue to resonate. The ongoing war on terror, the rise of ISIS, and America’s seemingly never-ending military presence in the Middle East all serve to drive the narrative of a war between civilizations. Previous administrations have, however, strongly resisted accepting the deeper themes of Huntington’s work, particularly the idea that modernization does not necessarily lead to democratization. Indeed, perhaps the most insidious idea in Huntington’s work is his belief that there is an inherent contradiction between non-Western cultures and liberal values. [x] The administration of George W. Bush, strongly influenced by neoconservative ideals, and that of Barack Obama, which tended towards liberal internationalism, both rejected this idea in the strongest terms. Yet while any attempt to divine the foreign policy direction of the Trump administration is little more than Kremlinology at this point, there is no denying that both he and his top advisors appear far more comfortable with the idea that non-Western cultures cannot accept liberalism.

Take Michael Flynn, a retired Lieutenant General, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and now Trump’s National Security Advisor. In a 2016 book co-authored with Michael Ledeen, Flynn argued that “We’re in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by a totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam.” [xi] Flynn and his co-author paint a remarkably Huntingtonian picture: an anti-Western alliance of Islamic extremists (both Sunni and Shi’a), tied to China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela by arms sales, proliferation, and hatred of the United States. Like Huntington, Flynn believes that “Islam’s borders are bloody, and so are its innards.” [xii] But where Huntington used data to show this trend and argued that it is likely a temporary effect of demographic shifts, Flynn suggests that Islamism – by which he means Islamic political thought of any variant – is a violent and totalitarian ideology.

The president’s new Chief Strategist, Stephen Bannon, goes further in arguing that the United States should take an aggressive stance against radical Islam, placing it in the context of historic conflict between civilizations. In one 2014 interview, Bannon noted: “If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers… kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places.” [xiii] Indeed, Bannon’s comments often omit the “radical” modifier, describing Islam itself as a threat darker than fascism and communism. [xiv] Neither Flynn nor Bannon confine their civilizational worldview to the Islamic world. For both, China is viewed as an expansionist threat to the West, particularly in terms of trade.

And like Huntington – whose work on immigration a critic once pithily described as “Patrick Buchanan with footnotes” [xv] - Bannon appears to believe that immigration poses a direct threat to Western identity, no matter how economically successful the immigrants. Bannon has even praised Alexander Dugin, proponent of Eurasianism, a Russian strand of traditionalist, nationalist, far-right political thought. [xvi] Certainly, some in the administration have contradicted these sentiments, most notably James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, but there has been little internal opposition to the flurry of internal executive orders and decisions which appear drawn from this Huntingtonian worldview. In just over seven days, the new administration has sought to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and implemented draconian and potentially illegal new immigration restrictions.

A Warning, Not a Roadmap

Notably, Trump’s team has rarely made an explicit connection to Huntington’s work. Flynn’s book does not cite it, though he has used the phrase in (now deleted) tweets, while Bannon employs the language of Huntington – with frequent allusions to the “Judeo-Christian West” – but does not explicitly credit his ideas. And there is another major difference between Huntington’s work and the Trump administration’s apparent worldview. The original “clash of civilizations” article generated a furor among those who believed that Huntington was advocating this future. Yet as the author himself pointed out, the article title included a rarely noticed question mark. [xvii] Huntington was not advocating civilizational conflict; instead, he feared it, seeking to prevent an overextended United States from making crucial mistakes in the complex post-Cold War world.

Much of Huntington’s book focused on the concrete steps needed to prevent civilizational conflict. While some of these have not aged well – his argument in favor of NATO expansion now seems particularly poorly thought out – his central arguments remain pertinent. In addition to maintaining Western military and economic supremacy, Huntington argued that policymakers must recognize that Western intervention “is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.” [xviii] Many of the ideas proposed by the new administration fly directly in the face of Huntington’s recommendations: the cancellation of the TPP may push Japan closer to China; Trump’s disastrous quarrel with Mexico undermines Huntington’s admonition to build better ties with Latin America: the intensification of the War on Terror will stir further popular opposition to U.S. intervention in the Middle East; and the choice to agitate on behalf of Taiwan will worsen relations with China.

Understanding these points of divergence does not require acceptance of Huntington’s theory. Indeed, many of Huntington’s ideas are inimical to liberal values, from his distasteful views on immigration and multiculturalism to his argument that the West should seek to hobble the economic development of countries elsewhere. [xix] But it is important to understand these ideas. Trump’s administration appears to bring U.S. foreign policy another step closer to embracing a Huntingtonian view of the world; senior administration members genuinely appear to believe the United States is engaged in an existential civilizational struggle. Yet they also seem unaware of Huntington’s cassandraic warnings against pursuing actions which are more likely to provoke conflict with other states than prevent them. If the administration continues down this path, the results may be grim.

[i] Trump, Donald. “Inaugural Address.” Speech, January 20, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address .

[ii] Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History.” The National Interest , Summer 1989.

[iii] Huntington, Samuel P. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993).

[iv] Huntington identifies seven civilizations: Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Slavic-Orthodox, Western, and Latin American. Notably, he argues that neither Russia nor Latin America is Western despite their European heritage.

[v] See, for example, Haas, Mark L. The ideological origins of great power politics: 1789-1989 . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

[vi] Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. “The Modernizing Imperative: Tradition and Change.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 4 (1993).

[vii] Wike, Richard, Bruce Stokes, and Jacob Poushter. “America’s Global Image.” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. June 23, 2015. http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/23/1-americas-global-image/ .

[viii] Huntington, Samuel P. The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996: 246-252.

[ix] Flynn, Michael T., and Michael Ledeen. The field of fight: how we can win the global war against radical Islam and its allies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.

[x] Huntington (1996): 58.

[xi] Flynn (2016):8.

[xii] Huntington (1996): 258.

[xiii] Feder, J. Lester. “This is How Steve Bannon Sees the Entire World.” Buzzfeed News, November 16, 2016. https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world .

[xiv] In a January 2016 radio interview, Bannon commented: “This is in 1938. This is when Europe’s looking down the barrel of fascism – the rise of Mussolini in Italy, Stalin and the Russians and the communist Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. And obviously Hitler and the Nazis. I mean you’re looking at fascism, you’re looking at communism. And to say that – what so blows me away is the timing of it. You could look in 1938 and say “Look it’s pretty dark here in Europe right now, but there’s something actually much darker. And that is Islam.” See “Breitbart News Daily.” January 6, 2016. https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/breitbart-news-daily-dr-thomas-williams-january-6-2016?in=breitbart/sets/breitbart-news-daily-january-6 .

[xv] Wolfe, Alan. “Native Son: Samuel Huntington Defends the Homeland.” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 3 (2004).

[xvi] It is, however, interesting to note that neither Flynn nor Bannon are as friendly towards Russia as recent media coverage implies. Both interpret Russia as a potential ally in the fight against jihadism – though Flynn doubts Russia can make a substantive contribution here – but not as a longer-term ally or indeed a member of the West. In this, Huntington’s portrayal of Russia as both the core of its own civilization and a state torn between joining the West and reasserting its own Slavic identity again seems prescient.

[xvii] Huntington, Samuel P. “If Not Civilizations, What? Samuel Huntington Responds to his Critics.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 5 (1993).

[xviii] Huntington (1996): 312.

[xix] Huntington’s views on immigration are laid out more explicitly in Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Also from this issue

Emma Ashford reviews the thesis of Samuel Huntington’s 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order . She also looks at some of the responses it has received, both positive and negative. She finds that Huntington’s thesis, while rough in itself, is apt to be simplified still further by policymakers. Above all, she urges us to remember that Huntington did not mean to champion the West within a clash of civilizations; he hoped, rather, to avert any such clash in the first place. Huntington viewed Western intervention as potentially destabilizing and apt to precipitate a clash of civilizations, by no means necessary, that he sought to avoid. We simplify his message at our own peril.

Response Essays

Paul Musgrave finds in clash of civilizations theory little more than an unseemly fantasy. Why, he asks, are we still talking about this? Empirically, the supporting evidence is weak. The world is becoming more peaceful, not more violent, over time. And Huntington’s theoretical framework hasn’t been the starting point for significant research breakthroughs. Rather, it’s more commonly used as target practice in teaching students how to recognize weak arguments. In a sense, however, we are stuck with the clash of civilizations, because it is a politically popular idea, and because some version of it seems to inform an a growing share of American foreign policy. We must take care, Musgrave agrees, that its description of civilizational conflict does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Trump administration is not precisely Huntingtonian, says Alina Polyakova, and the differences matter more than one may appreciate at first. Stephen Bannon has described the key conflict in the world today as the one between traditionalist nationalism and secular, modernizing globalism. Yet that’s a conflict taking place within the West, not across Huntington’s civilizational lines. Intriguingly, Huntington cautioned that if Russia ever became ascendant as a champion of tradition and nationalism, its interests would fail to align with ours, and in that case Russia would make an inappropriate ally, even for a conservative United States. Polyakova finds this an apt warning for our own time.

Zack Cooper looks at Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and asks: Where’s Asia in all of this? He notes that Huntington did have an answer. Asia contains many different civilizations in the Huntingtonian paradigm. It therefore makes for a natural site of conflict. U.S. administrations have repeatedly tried to focus their foreign policy on Asia, only to be detoured by events in the Middle East. But it mischaracterizes Huntington’s work to imagine that conflicts in the Middle East were the necessary upshot of his theories.

The Conversation

An Illiberal International? Or a World of State Power? by Emma Ashford

View the discussion thread.

What is the Clash of Civilizations?

The Clash of Civilizations was a theory developed in the 1990s that warned of a dystopian-like clash between major world ideologies.

The history of the world is rife with internal and external conflicts. However, not every one of these wars could be called a "clash of civilization".

The Clash of Civilization was a 1996 book written by American political scientist Samuel Huntington. In brief, the book states that religious and cultural differences will be the key starting point of conflicts among different groups in the world after the Cold War . The book accuses Islamic extremism in particular as the biggest threat to the peace of the world.

This theory has been very controversial since its inception. An outline of the theory and its main criticisms are available below.

What Is a Civilization?

There are many types of civilizations found around the world - however, "western" culture and Islamic culture have been singled out as two of the world's most encompassing. In general, the Western world comprises of Europe and other places that Europeans had settled in the past such as Canada, Australia, and America while the Islamic world is mainly concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. In his book, Huntington paid a lot of attention to these two worlds and extensively described them explaining how the two could cause conflicts in the world.

Why Do Civilizations Clash?

Samuel Huntington believed that there were aspects of both Islamic and Christian (western) culture that were destined to clash with one another. This is particularly because of the "all-or-nothing" nature of religions, were followers believe that only their faith is the right one and use it to justify acts which could even turn violent.

Huntington also believed that civilizations clash because they are separated from one another by language, tradition, culture, history, and religion. In terms of the clash between Christianity and Islam, Huntington stressed that clash is unavoidable because the two main religions (Islam and Christianity) keep holding to the claim that they are “only true religion” in the world. Additionally, Huntington asserted that while the world shrinks with globalization, interactions all over the world increase, intensifying what Huntington calls "civilizational consciousness": the know-how of the differences among commonalities and civilizations inside the civilization.

How Can a Clash of Civilizations Be Avoided?

Samuel Huntington proposed three types of general actions that non-western civilization can use in response to countries in the western region. One is that the non-western countries can try to achieve isolation so that they can maintain their values and protect themselves from invasion by the west. Secondly, the non-western countries could accept and be part of the western values.

Additionally, through an economic transformation, countries outside the western world can attempt to balance western power. While still maintaining their values, they can cooperate with other non-western countries to come up with military power and economic cooperation. Huntington believed that accumulating the power of non-western civilizations and putting them together could push the west to cultivate a better know-how of the fundamentals of the culture behind other civilizations. In that regard, western civilization will stop been regarded as "universal" as different civilizations will be able to coexist and come together to shape the future world.

Criticism of the Clash of Civilizations

The clash of civilizations has garnered plenty of criticism. The denunciation of the clash of civilization by different individuals can be organized under three sub-headings: ethical, methodological, and epistemological critiques.

Epistemological Critique

This critique condemns the clash of civilizations for its elitist, realist, and orientalist outlook. This criticism tears about the assumption of the persistent probability of war between civilizations, which it says shows a fear that is embedded in political realism.

The critique also points out how the language of "them" and "us" is deeply rooted in Huntington's thesis, creating a sense of otherness which can open the door to prejudice.

Methodological Critique

This critique states that Huntington neglects to consider the internal dynamics and myriad complexities of Islam, as well as the Muslim world at large. This critique states that the clash of civilizations theory is an overgeneralization and is selective.

Ethical Critique

The ethical critique rebukes the immoral importance of the entire thesis. It claims that the clash of civilization is a decided thesis that aids a particular interest and is not helpful in predicting world conflicts.

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The Ideological Function of the Huntington's Thesis about Clash of Civilizations

2006, Kosovo and Metohija: Past, Present , Future. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

This paper calls into question the fruitfulness as well as the ability of Huntington’s thesis about the clash of civilizations to offer an adequate conceptual, theoretical and methodological framework for explaining the armed conflicts at the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century, using the analysis of the war in Kosovo and Metohija as an example. On the basis of evidence of cooperation between members of different “civilizations,” of conflict between members of the same “civilization,” as well as on the basis of declarations by the transnational actors themselves about the real causes of the war in Kosovo and Metohija, this paper shows that Huntington’s thesis about the clash of civilizations has a twofold ideological function. The first is to divert attention from fundamental geo-strategic and political economic interests of transnational financial and corporate capital, militarily organized into NATO and under the leadership of the US, and the second is to turn the victims of recolonization against each other, in accordance with the age-old imperial rule –divide et impera.

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Res Politicae

Zuzanna Sielska

In this article I would like to present conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina based on Samuel Hantinton’s „clash of civilisations” theory. First of all I will explain diffirent terms of civilisation, after that I will write more about Huntington’s „Clash of civilisation”. What is more I would like to picture problem of three religions and three civilisations in Bosnia. Last but not least I will write about war in Bosnia. In The end of this article I will answer the main question: Is it possible that „afterdayton’s” creature has got a chance to remain, if it is mixture of nationalities and religions? Keywords: Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina, conflict, clash of civilization.

Hakan Yapar

Christian W. Spang

This is the third article of the OTB Special Section "Discussing Geopolitics", based on my Tsukuba University graduate-level intensive course “The Origins of Geopolitical Thinking” (spring 2010). As the title of this paper suggests, we are discussing some of the shortcomings of Samuel Huntington|s "Clash of Civilizations?" article.

Iyan Al Iqbal

Anna Khakee

In an article – and later a book – that have received more attention than perhaps any others in International Relations, Samuel P. Huntington predicted that the ‘West and the rest’ would clash because of differences in religion and civilization as the ‘highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have’ (Huntington 1993, 24). Huntington’s hypothesis was that ‘the fault lines between civilizations’ would replace Cold War ideological boundaries as the ‘flash points for crisis and bloodshed’ (Huntington 1993, 29; Huntington 1996, 125).

Angelos Schoinas

Katerina Rigas

A theory that has drawn attention in International Relations is Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of civilizations” (1993). Huntington claimed that cultural identities will define the role of the nation-state in post-Cold War developments, and that civilizational identities will become increasingly important in determining future conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Huntington’s thesis can explain power relations between states in a post-national era of world politics. The work that has been consulted includes authors that have theorized on whether the nation-state will survive globalization, authors that have discussed the imminent clash between Western and Islamic civilization in particular and authors that preceded Huntington and theorized on cultural identities, such as Max Weber and Oswald Spengler. A crosscut analysis attempts to synthesize arguments and offer conclusive remarks on the validity of Huntington’s thesis.

Abdulmelik Alkan

ABSTRACT This paper explores and presents examples how and why Samuel Huntington’ Clash of Civilization theory’ is weak. Huntington attempts to define the political and cultural realities of the post-Cold War World. He rightfully identified that the World was changing, and that nations were no longer rigidly divided among ideological lines. The new order would be defined by differences among civilizations, particularly the West (North America and Western and Northern Europe, Orthodox Eurasia, the Muslim World and the Sinic civilizations of the Far East. He outlines the differences between the cultures, particularly the liberal and individualistic west, in contrast to the more conservative and collectivist cultures of the Muslim and Sinic world. He hypothesizes that the contrasts between cultures will fuel future conflicts and wars, as opposed to ideologies and resources. However there are many negations to Huntington’s thesis. Many of his constructed civilization blocs are not united, and some of the cultural alliances Huntington has predicted have not come into fruition. Much of the conflicts that have occurred since the 1990s have been fueled by a need to control resources and territory, rather than to assert one set of values over the other. Many nations within Huntington’s constructed cultural blocs are not always in agreement among each other (e.g. China vs. Vietnam in control over the Spratly Islands), which raises doubt of cohesion of the civilization blocs constructed in the thesis. The Muslim world is more of a spectator and a battleground between the West and an evident Sinic-Orthodox (Russian) Alliance. While it is true that the World is no longer divided into rigid ideological lines, it is implausible that the world will be divided into cultural blocs. Keywords: Clash of Civilizations, Muslim World, Sinic Orbit, Orthodox

Zohaib Arshad

Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences

Tahir Ashraf

After the disintegration of former Soviet Union in 1989, debate started among the intellectuals as well as policy makers in USA about the future shape of world politics and role of the US in it. In this regard, early voice was Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” which focused on political ideologies as the main unit of analysis. To him, after the end of cold war, western liberal democracy has emerged as the final form of government. While participating in this debate, Samuel P. Huntington wrote his renowned article “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs in 1993. Huntington gave an alternative interpretation about the future shape of world politics in the post- cold war era. He took difference in civilization as one of the important sources of conflicts in the world. In this article three important issues regarding Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations? have been addressed. These issues include conceptual strengths of Huntington’s thesis “The Clash of Civilizations?” ; academic strengths and weak points in “The Clash of Civilizations?”. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” has also been analysed in this context of emerging contemporary international political system. To conclude, Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” was an alternative interpretation of the possible emergence of international political system. It was a response to liberals among US policy circles who were viewing liberal democracy as final form of government. While taking civilization as unit of analysis, Huntington attempted to explain emerging structure of international politics and American role in it. However, Huntington is futuristic in his approach.

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Islam & the West: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis.

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] The results confirm the first claim in Huntington's thesis: culture does matter, and indeed matters a lot, so that religious legacies leave their distinct imprint on contemporary values. But Huntington is essentially mistaken in assuming that the core clash between the West and Islamic worlds concerns democracy, as the evidence suggests striking similarities in the political values held in these societies. It remains true that Islamic nations differ from the West on issues of religious leadership, but this is not a simple dichotomous clash, as many countries around the globe display similar attitudes to Islam. Moreover the original thesis fails to identify the primary cultural fault line between the West and Islam, concerning the social issues of gender equality and sexual liberalization. The values separating Islam and the West revolve far more centrally around Eros than Demos.

Huntington’s Liberal Heirs

“The Clash of Civilizations” prefigures the liberal internationalist war of freedom and autocracy.

Few contemporary geopolitical theories have proven as influential beyond their immediate context as Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis. Focused on the cultural and religious fault lines that Huntington believed would set the stage for a new round of intractable conflicts following the Soviet collapse, the Clash of Civilizations was a sobering rejoinder to globalization at a time when many in the West were beginning to dream of an international community united around shared norms and values.

Huntington’s approach of grouping countries into discrete blocs—bound not by something as variable as interests but by a shared underlying cultural essence—that are inevitably hostile to one another was pilloried for decades as an illiberal reading of international politics. A generation of liberal-minded scholars and experts decried Huntington for advancing a framework that treats inter-state conflict as pre-determined. Huntington’s approach, they claimed, is not just reductionist and ahistorical, but dangerous for its capacity to become a self-fulfilling prophecy if adopted by leaders as a lens for interpreting the world.

It is one of the great tragedies of post–Cold War politics that many of these same voices have gone on to advance their own narrative of international politics as an existential confrontation between hostile blocs—one that, ironically, is less nuanced and more prescriptive of conflict than even the most uncharitable readings of Huntington. In this liberal internationalist adaptation of Huntington, the clash is not of civilizations as such but between Western-style liberal democracy and its many enemies. This rival bloc has gone by many names: the former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen referred to it as the “autocratic camp,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell termed it a new “axis of evil,” and NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg called it an “alliance of authoritarian powers.” Whatever terminology one employs, the concept is the same: The West is locked in an existential, values-driven struggle with much of the rest of the world. Meaningful compromise is thus impossible because this global struggle is shaped not by situational interests but by implacable ideological differences.

The latest scheme along these lines comes from Jonathan Rauch in the Atlantic . “Liberal-minded, Western-oriented countries,” Rauch argues, are confronted with an “axis of resistance” led by the “authoritarian dyad of Russia and Iran.” Rauch, citing Frederick Kagan, adds the nuance that this bloc, which also includes China and non-state actors like the Houthi rebels in Yemen, is united not around a common set of beliefs but in their shared opposition to the West. This is an important caveat which, under different circumstances, could have set the stage for an analytically stronger framework, but Rauch dilutes and renders it meaningless by quickly returning to the overarching premise that this axis of resistance is driven by the goal of “rolling back liberal democracy.”

This framework invites no shortage of technical objections. If Rauch’s “liberal alliance” has to be stretched to include the bastion of democracy and human rights that is Saudi Arabia, it raises questions as to the soundness of the author’s core concept. One can frame such relationships as a geopolitical necessity, but Rauch robs himself of the ability to make arguments based on realpolitik by taking the position that the international system is shaped by clashing ideologies, not hard power concerns.

In a similar vein, Rauch’s portrait of Vladimir Putin as a committed enemy of the West elides the more accurate and complex story of a post-Soviet Russia that initially saw itself as a Western, European power and sought to integrate into Western institutions. It was driven to an anti-Western posture for reasons that had nothing to do with an aversion to liberalism and democracy but were instead rooted in evolving Russian threat perceptions of NATO and the West.

But to dwell on these lower-order problems is to miss the larger conceit of frameworks premised on a grand ideological confrontation between the West and its enemies. Bizarrely, the same elite sensibility that rightfully ridiculed George Bush’s assertion that our adversaries “hate our freedoms” has embraced a foreign policy outlook steeped in the equally absurd idée fixe that Russia, China, and others hate the West for its democratic values. This way of thinking imposes an analytical filter that makes it impossible to assess our great power competitors’ goals and intentions. It is teleological and anti-empirical in its insistence that American policy must stem from the conviction that our adversaries aren’t simply driven by different security interests but seek to destroy our very way of life.

Worse still, this approach enables a particularly destructive kind of policy fatalism. To proceed from the notion that the Russia-China partnership—and, indeed, all instances of international collaboration against the West—are ideologically pre-determined isn’t just wrong on the basis of the facts but lulls policymakers into a dangerous complacence.

The current state of affairs between the U.S.-led West and much of the non-Western world is, in fact, the natural byproduct of a policy approach that enforces values over concrete interests and insists on putting U.S. credibility on the line in far-flung reaches of the world where no critical interests are at stake. Having driven America’s adversaries together by the sum of its actions and rhetoric, the neoconservative–liberal internationalist consensus that has steered US policy for the past three decades now seeks to absolve itself with the ad hoc excuse that the emergence of an anti-Western bloc was always inevitable. Their storied record of gross foreign policy mismanagement suggests otherwise.

The post–Cold War West’s most powerful civilizational advantage, apropos of Huntington, is not in wealth or military might but in the universal appeal of its organizations and institutions. Weaponizing the dollar’s status as a global reserve currency, walling off access to Western-led commercial systems, and gatekeeping participation in multilateral platforms in response to foreign transgressions, whether real or perceived, facilitates the division of the world into competing blocs in ways that undermine the West economically and geopolitically. Even a country as dominant and virtually unchallenged as the US was in the 1990’s can only run up the geopolitical tab so much and for so long before its peer competitors start aggressively balancing against it .

None of this is, or has to be, a fait accompli —these are choices made by Western leaders. Convincing ourselves that this division is immutable and legitimizing it in metaphysical terms as a battle between liberal democracy and its discontents is, at best, a recipe for continued American decline. At worst, it is laying the ideological groundwork for the U.S. to drift into ruinous wars in Europe, the Middle East, or elsewhere.

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The point is not that there is or ever can be a perfect harmony of interests between the US and its great power peers. Nor is it, if one was to take the logic behind the clash of values argument to its other extreme, that Washington is to blame for all global conflict and instability.

The bottom line, rather, is that U.S. policy must employ a better analytical lens than the democracy vs. autocracy thesis and other such reductionist, manichean tales for engaging partners and adversaries alike.

America still enjoys tremendous latent advantages. If coupled with a more sound assessment of threats and interests, they can be leveraged to reverse the damage done by decades of ill-conceived schemes to extend a vision of primacy that has failed the American people at home and abroad. There is every opportunity to right this ship if, as is long overdue, U.S. leaders finally abandon the search of monsters to destroy and repair instead to a pragmatic, restrained foreign policy that is moored in concrete national interests.

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Samuel Huntington’s Great Idea Was Totally Wrong

His “clash of civilizations” essay in foreign affairs turned 30 this year. it was provocative, influential, manna for the modern right—and completely and utterly not true..

The “Kennan Sweepstakes,” they called it in the early 1990s. Decades earlier, the diplomat George Kennan had won lasting renown (and lifelong self-torture) with his writings at the Cold War’s outset that outlined the nature of the Soviet threat to the United States and prescribed a vague strategy to counter it. Now, as the Soviet Union relaxed its grip on Central Europe and then imploded, leading thinkers, government officials, and policy wonks scrambled to define the nature of this new age in foreign affairs (ideally via a catchy term like Kennan’s “containment”).

Francis Fukuyama’s essay on “The End of History?” in The National Interest is only the best-remembered of the ideas that were tossed around. The journalist Charles Krauthammer identified a “unipolar moment” where peace could only be assured by the United States having “the strength and will to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.” With less literary felicity, the political scientist John Mearsheimer foresaw a Europe dissolving into chaos and war as “Germany, France, Britain, and perhaps Italy will assume major-power status” and battle for power. Leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden called for a renewed emphasis on cooperation through the United Nations and anticipated reduced military conflict, while, in 1993, President Bill Clinton floated “democratic enlargement” as his guidepost.

This was the context when Samuel Huntington injected his famous ideas into public consciousness 30 years ago. A 1993 Foreign Affairs essay he expanded into a bestselling book with a slightly different title three years later, “The Clash of Civilizations?” argued that the source of conflict in the world in the coming decades would not be primarily economic or ideological, as it had been. Rather, cultural issues would rise to the forefront of the international arena in unprecedented ways. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics,” he wrote, making a bold prediction despite the question mark in the essay’s title. Countries should be grouped together not by their political systems or levels of economic development but by civilizational belonging and be “differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion.” Nation-states would still be the predominant actors in the world, but they would battle less over geopolitics as it had been traditionally understood since the seventeenth century than over resurging cultural and religious identities. “The next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations.”

Huntington clarified that he wasn’t eager to see a clash of civilizations—he advised Western policymakers to be cognizant of the tremendous sensitivities around cultural issues so they would avoid imposing their values on non-Western peoples and refrain from interfering in their affairs. “The reason he wanted to put the question mark is that he didn’t want the world to go down this direction; he wanted there to be cooperation among civilizations—reconciliation and dialogue,” recalled his one-time doctoral student Fareed Zakaria, who commissioned Huntington’s article as managing editor of Foreign Affairs . That call for peaceful collaboration between civilizations was largely lost in the subsequent furor over the article, although calls for cooperation were admittedly not the bulk of the essay or the book but merely a small component.

Huntington died in 2008, but the argument he ignited has long outlasted him. The debate over the clash has not abated, 30 years on. It is still common each month to read in the media about a civilizational clash or hear elected officials and intellectuals reference the catchphrase, as a random sample indicates. “The Theory Is Alive,” the Indian version of The Telegraph declared in April. In June, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI said that the world was witnessing not a clash of civilizations but a “clash of ignorances.” Chinese leaders recently proposed an “equality of civilizations” in place of the West’s clash, according to The Economist , which reported a diplomat lamenting that “the antiquated thesis of a ‘clash of civilisations’ is resurfacing.”

Indeed, Huntington’s argument is so antiquated that it has already gone through several afterlives and been resurrected, like a horror movie villain. As the twentieth century ended and liberal capitalist democracy seemed unrivaled, it appeared as though The Clash of Civilizations was unduly pessimistic and perhaps irrelevant to the international arena. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Huntington’s book became a bestseller for a second time, as conservatives across the United States and Europe cited its arguments for why Islam was fundamentally incompatible with Western society. When refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East attempted to find stability in white-majority countries, Huntington’s ideas were invoked as a reason for opposing such ventures. Right-wingers like Steve Bannon have utilized the Clash of Civilizations thesis to reject immigration to the United States. Perhaps most surprisingly, thinkers around Russian leader Vladimir Putin have argued that their country is the leading defender of a Christian civilization that the rest of Europe has largely abandoned, providing yet another lifeline to a 30-year-old essay.

Huntington would almost certainly abhor many of the uses of his arguments, given his interpersonal decency, frequent travel to universities and legislatures around the world, mentorship of and friendship with people of color, and lifelong support for U.S. interests. “I think he would have absolute contempt for this type of stuff,” said Gideon Rose, another of Huntington’s students and the Foreign Affairs managing editor following Zakaria. “He would have been appalled at the disorder, he would have been appalled at the prejudice, he would have been appalled at the anti-intellectualism. He was no fan of elites, but he was also in no way a populist.”

And yet, by simplifying the world into categories defined largely by culture and religion and declaring them inevitably hostile to one another, Huntington established an intellectual template for what has followed in his wake. By portraying the West as a unique civilization under siege from mass immigration and Islam, he drastically underestimated America’s assimilative power and most Muslims’ rejection of fundamentalist Islam. Even worse, Huntington’s ideas were so powerful and popular that they deepened currents hostile to peaceful coexistence between Western countries and others. One of the most prescient comments on Huntington’s ideas came from the Indonesian Australian writer Wang Gungwu, who observed in 1996, “This is what is so stunning about The Clash of Civilizations : it is not just about the future, but may actually help to shape it.” Wang was right about that, and we are largely worse off for it.

Huntington was a shy political scientist who began teaching at Harvard in 1949. A quintessential WASP, he’d registered as a Democrat the year earlier at the age of 21, met his wife while writing speeches for Adlai Stevenson, advised presidential nominees Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, and served on Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council. A visit to his archive at Harvard reveals that he offered some thoughts on foreign policy to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, around the time he was putting the finishing touches on the “Clash” essay.

Despite his long relationship with the Democratic Party, Huntington was anything but a partisan hack. Before he gained international fame, he already stood at the top of his profession for his contributions to subfields of political science. His first book, The Soldier and the State , had an enormous impact on the theory of civilian-military relations. His next major work, Political Order in Changing Societies , was a landmark in comparative politics. And his book immediately preceding Clash , The Third Wave , introduced that phrase to encompass the series of transitions to democracy that numerous countries undertook in the late 1970s and 1980s. (It also displayed Huntington’s knack for fashioning memorable neologisms to describe political phenomena.) Mixed in with these achievements were other books and many journal articles he wrote, alongside co-founding Foreign Policy and serving as president of the American Political Science Association. In a 1999 cover story for this magazine on the decline of political science, Jonathan Cohn called Huntington “arguably his generation’s most influential student of international relations.”

With his skeptical worldview, Huntington was slow to see that the Cold War was ending as the 1980s wound down. But when it did, he anticipated not Fukuyama’s pacific ideal but a “jungle-like world of multiple dangerous, hidden traps, [and] unpleasant surprises,” he said in a 1990 lecture. He added, “We need a good word to describe the international relations of this new world … the right phrase to replace [Walter] Lippmann’s Cold War as a label for this much more complicated situation of ambiguous relationships and multiple conflicts.” Over the next two years, he set himself to that task.

Some of The Third Wave had examined the relationships between cultures and democratization. The book argued that changes within the Roman Catholic Church and economic development had led countries with Catholic majorities toward democracy, whereas before the 1970s, democratic countries had mostly contained Protestant majorities. Huntington attached a great deal of importance to culture’s role in political affairs, and “The Clash” was an extension of this. But his thinking evolved in spurts, and it was comfortable with nuances to the point of being contradictory.

In October 1992, Huntington wrote a memo to Bill Clinton’s campaign suggesting the Arkansas governor prioritize the expansion of democracy. “A world in which Russia and China were democracies like all the other great powers would truly be a democratic and a highly secure world,” he wrote. But that same month, Huntington debuted a far more pessimistic thesis about a clash of civilizations in a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank.

He adopted the term after reading the historian Bernard Lewis’s 1990 essay in The Atlantic on “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” Lewis argued that the separation of church and state arose from Christian principles, not universal ones. Conversely, many Muslims were reverting to what he called the “classical Islamic view” that deemed secularism, modernity, and the equality of nonbelievers with godly people as heretical. “This is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both,” Lewis wrote.

Lewis was a conservative-leaning scholar, charged as a quintessential contemporary Orientalist scholar by the left-leaning literary critic and Palestinian activist Edward Said. But Huntington was an admirer of Lewis, being a conservative Democrat, as devoted to order, security, and American traditions as any Republican. And so his appearance at AEI was unsurprising. “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural,” he announced. “The major conflicts will [be] between peoples of different civilizations.” He said he was not offering a prediction but a hypothesis, although that uncertainty decreased in the following years.

Huntington circulated a version of the speech as a working paper for Harvard’s now defunct John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, which he directed (the Olin Foundation was a longtime funder of conservative causes). His students included Zakaria and Rose. Senator Bill Bradley and historian Paul Kennedy also discussed the essay, and Huntington’s archives contain a handwritten note from former President Richard Nixon congratulating the professor for writing the best post–Cold War essay and having “raised issues [in the AEI lecture] that no one else, in or out of government, has adequately addressed.” Even before it was published, then, the essay was generating buzz.

When Zakaria became managing editor, he asked Huntington to adapt the paper as the cover story for the summer 1993 issue of a redesigned Foreign Affairs . “I definitely knew it was going to be big because it was so provocative,” Zakaria recalled. “And he wasn’t famous, but he was famous enough that he had authority.” Zakaria admired Huntington’s prescient understanding of the power of culture in the post–Cold War era and his willingness to dispel liberal illusions around the triumph of globalization, free markets, and democracy.

But nobody, not Zakaria nor Huntington, could possibly anticipate how big Huntington’s essay would be. With some changes made to the Olin paper at Zakaria’s suggestion, “The Clash of Civilizations?” attracted more attention than anything Foreign Affairs had published since Kennan’s Cold War essays, and more than anything it has published since. Editors were deluged with requests to reprint the article and responses from other intellectuals, some of which they printed. Huntington was flooded with interview and lecture requests from around the world, where readers seemed as fascinated by, supportive of, or angry about the “Clash” thesis as were Americans. As much as any article in a popular foreign policy journal can, “The Clash” penetrated into the public consciousness and began influencing world events immediately. The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia cabled the State Department in August 1993 complaining that the article had “caught on like wildfire in Asia,” to the point that “dealing with the issue is as great a challenge for policy and public diplomacy as any in the post–Cold War era.”

What made “The Clash” radioactive was not just its unfashionable pessimism or its author’s establishment pedigree. Rather, it seemed to explain complex global realities in a novel, simple way. The Gulf war could, if one squinted hard enough, impersonate a conflict between different countries from different civilizations. The same was true of the Yugoslav Wars then raging , the Israeli-Arab conflict, and China’s opposition to U.S. policies. Any friction between states with different cultures could appear as evidence of a clash between civilizations, as could any friendship between countries with similar cultures, which Huntington called “kin countries.” Even an inchoate sense that other people around the world were just somehow different from Westerners could be justified in civilizational terms.

Huntington also had something going for him that most political scientists do not: He could really write. His sentences were clear, bold, and blunt, perhaps at times to a fault. “Differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic,” he wrote. Huntington was notable for his confidence in writing declarative sentences that simplistically categorized billions of people. The world would be shaped, he said, by “Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilization.” Billions of humans were assigned to these eight groups. Each group possessed their own “philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life.” This cultural determinism was nearly inescapable and explained the world’s complicated political and economic circumstances. “Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world,” he wrote, minimizing such weighty factors as geography, history, imperialism, economics, and leadership quality. Comprehending Huntington’s paradigm didn’t require knowing any history or global politics; anyone could just look at a globe, see the divisions, and chalk them up to inevitable cultural differences.

Huntington’s blithe generalizations about millions of people recalled discredited modes of thinking. In the book, he wrote that “civilization and race are not identical” but conceded that “a significant correspondence exists between the division of people by cultural characteristics into civilizations and their division by physical characteristics into races.” Civilizations as entities defined by stubborn cultural elements differed from civilizations defined by immutable racial characteristics—but the two were close enough to be kin themselves.

Relatedly, Huntington portrayed the West as unique and fretted that its very survival was threatened by mass immigration and Islam. Mexican immigrants particularly were not assimilating into the United States, inciting a “demographic invasion.” He saw civilizational conflict in such minor developments as Mexican immigrants demonstrating in Los Angeles against a referendum meant to deny state benefits to undocumented people. These sections of his book have largely been forgotten, but swaths of The Clash of Civilization s read like a Trump campaign brochure with footnotes.

Huntington responded to little of the barrage of criticisms the book inspired. He argued that his paradigm was more accurate than any other, and that simplifications of international relations were always necessary. Otherwise, he addressed only what he saw as misrepresentations of his argument, and even then he did so only occasionally. “His modus operandi would be to do his work on a subject, answer a question to his own satisfaction, and then to move on to another topic that he found interesting,” recalled Gideon Rose. However, Huntington, unafraid of being unpopular, did grant many interviews and traveled internationally to address his argument to local audiences.

But while Huntington was largely content to let the furor over his argument rage, he grew increasingly vocal with his alarm about Latino immigration to the United States. When he cast his vote for Bob Dole in 1996, he was voting for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time. “Recent Mexican and Muslim immigrants identify more with their country of origin than with the United States,” he said in 1998. He said multiculturalism had replaced a national feeling among elites, alienating them from ordinary Americans. “If multiculturalism continues to spread, it is likely at some point to generate an ethnic and possibly racist populist reaction from white Americans,” he predicted. “If this occurs, the United States would become isolationist and hostile toward much of the outside world.”

Huntington was correctly, brilliantly anticipating the direction in which the United States was headed, but he absolved white Americans of their xenophobic, authoritarian turn, perhaps because he shared some of their anxieties and prejudices about Latin Americans. His concern about Mexican immigration became a panic, one he said could jeopardize the country’s future, not just its allegedly fragile national identity. His last book, 2004’s Who Are We?, was borderline hysterical about the failures of the United States to remain unified in the face of the “illegal demographic invasion” and cosmopolitan elites. In this final work, Huntington did not just foresee the Trump movement that would emerge more than a decade later; he supported some of its primary grievances. “Cultural America is under siege,” he wrote. “Mexican immigration is leading toward the demographic reconquista of areas Americans took from Mexico by force in the 1830s and 1840s,” he wrote. Huntington suggested that Mexican culture and values were different from American ones, citing observers who believed “Hispanic traits” included mistrust of people outside the family, laziness, low regard for education, and an acceptance of poverty as a precondition to entering heaven. If the United States did nothing to reaffirm its “historic Anglo-Protestant culture,” it would devolve into two countries, he believed: one that retained its traditional values, the other a Hispanicized bloc that undermined what had established American greatness.

After Who Are We? , Huntington commenced a new work about the relationship between religion and nationalism called Chosen Peoples . Sadly, he never finished it, suffering health failures for years before dying in 2008. Even his many critics admitted that few other academics had shifted the world outside the academy as he had.

After 9/11, when The Clash of Civilizations hit the bestseller list for the second time, Simon & Schuster rushed 20,000 new copies of it into print. With extremists claiming to attack major American capitalist and governmental symbols in the name of Islam, it was easy to mistake Huntington for a prophet. Within hours of the attacks, fretful voices worried about making a civilizational clash a self-fulfilling reality. On September 11 itself, Pakistan’s ambassador to Russia said, “This must not be seen as a clash of civilizations between the Islamic and the Christian world. You must pay attention to the fact that every Islamic nation worth its name has condemned this.”

To some degree, his caution was heeded. French, German, Canadian, and Arab leaders swiftly cautioned against perceiving the attacks as part of a clash of civilizations, demonstrating how deeply and widely Huntington’s phrase had penetrated. President George W. Bush repeated that Islam was a great world religion not represented by terrorists and invoked Huntington’s phrase to repudiate it. “This struggle has been called the clash of civilizations,” Bush said . “In truth, it is a struggle for civilization.” Even Henry Kissinger warned against feeding into the narrative of a clash, as did analysts at the Heritage Foundation. Rudy Giuliani, at his zenith disguising himself as a big-hearted statesman, told the United Nations, “Surrounded by our friends of every faith, we know this is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a conflict between murderers and humanity.”

Others were less circumspect, in the United States and elsewhere. “It’s a clash of civilizations,” former Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said on The O’Reilly Factor on September 13. The Economist praised Huntington’s views on Islam as “cruel and sweeping, but nevertheless acute.” The Atlantic featured a glowing, nearly 9,500-word profile of Huntington, written by the journalist Robert Kaplan. A few years earlier, Kaplan had written Huntington a letter, found in his archives, praising the political scientist for being a bomb-thrower. “The real purpose of the intellectual is to constructively disturb ,” Kaplan wrote. “That is exactly what you have done.”

Indeed, Huntington seemed to enjoy the role of provocateur, and it gradually overtook his vocation as a detached political scientist. The Boston Globe profiled his revived fame in a front-page article, and Huntington believed a real clash was forthcoming as the West responded to the attacks, telling the paper, “I fear that while Sept. 11 united the West, the response to Sept. 11 will unite the Muslim world.” He believed that, as Osama bin Laden reportedly hoped, Muslims everywhere would revolt against the West and foment a world war. Soon after, Huntington wrote a Newsweek essay that was more narrow-minded than anything he had written. “Contemporary global politics is the age of Muslim wars,” he argued. “Muslim wars have replaced the Cold War as the principal form of international conflict.” Few other academics were writing anything like this for popular periodicals at the time. Huntington also strengthened the panic around terrorists using deadlier weapons than airplanes to attack the United States, estimating that bin Laden ran a network “with cells in perhaps 40 countries,” and 9/11 had “highlight[ed] the likelihood of chemical and biological attacks.”

Huntington’s caricatured generalizations about Islam legitimized other voices espousing religious and cultural essentialism. Talk about Islam as a dangerous, monolithic entity represented by its most violent elements became mainstreamed. The military historian John Keegan complimented Huntington’s prescience and declared , “A harsh, instantaneous attack may be most likely to impress the Islamic mind.” The syndicated columnist Richard Cohen wrote that “a rereading of [Huntington’s] article shows that much of it has held up” because “whatever happens to bin Laden or, for that matter, the Taliban, the cultural roots of this conflict will persist.” Another columnist, Rod Dreher, wrote in National Review , “it is unarguable that very many Muslims and their leaders despise non-Muslims, attack us rhetorically in religious terms, and wish to see us die for our infidelity to Allah.” He added menacingly, “if there is an Islamic fifth column in this country, the American public needs to know about it.” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got in on the action, declaring that “our civilization is superior to Islam.” But his views were widely criticized, and he took the rare step of half-heartedly apologizing .

In the ensuing years of Bush’s tenure, however, fewer apologies would be made for such denigrations of Islam as a religion and a civilization. As jihadists occasionally attacked Western countries, Muslim immigration continued, and Western armies occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamophobia became more politically acceptable, first on the religious right, then among think tankers such as Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, and, finally, among more moderate intellectuals such as Martin Amis and Sam Harris. Amis said , “I don’t think that we can accommodate cultures and ideologies that make life very difficult for half the human race: women.” By the time Barack Obama ran for president, anti-Islamic sentiment was widespread enough to facilitate frantic rumors about his religion. A language was needed to sanitize the anxieties of what was often sheer bigotry, and Huntington provided the lexicon and establishment imprimatur.

But even as Huntington’s thesis hardened into conventional wisdom in segments of the foreign policy and journalism worlds, matters took quite a different direction in the academy. In the book version of Clash , Huntington laid down a simple marker to help determine the value of his argument. “A crucial test of a paradigm’s validity and usefulness is the extent to which the predictions derived from it turn out to be more accurate than those from alternative paradigms,” he wrote. Soon after he published those words, scholars took up the challenge and began testing his theory. Among the first was a 2000 paper in Journal of Peace Research , in which three political scientists examined conflicts between 1950 and 1992 to determine if states from different civilizations were likelier to be in conflict, and to assess whether other theories better accounted for these conflicts. “There is little evidence that civilizations clash,” they found. Traditional international relations theories like realism better accounted for world events. Huntington responded that his thesis was meant to apply to the post–Cold War world, not the bulk of the years his critics had studied, although his essay made numerous present-tense statements about anti-Western civilization alignments, such as, “A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being, designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and weapons technologies needed to counter the military power of the West.”

The following year, two different political scientists looked in International Studies Quarterly at the relationship between civilizations and wars over nearly two centuries, between 1816 and 1992. They, too, found little support for Huntington’s theory. “Most importantly, our analysis reveals that during the post–Cold War era (1989–1992), the period in which Huntington contends that the clash of civilizations should be most apparent, civilization membership was not significantly associated with the probability of interstate war,” they wrote.

In 2002, still another scholar looked at conflicts between 1946 and 1997, also in Journal of Peace Research . This analysis, too, found that “state interactions across civilizational lines are not more conflict prone.” The same was true for the eight years since the Cold War ended, pace Huntington. Again in 2002, when Huntington’s retrograde ideas about Islam were coursing through American life, a paper in the British Journal of Political Science looked at data to assess whether ethnic conflicts since the Cold War that could be defined as civilizational had increased in quantity or intensity, let alone defined the period. Alas, “civilizational conflicts make up only a minority of ethnic conflict in the post–Cold War era.” Nor were those conflicts more intense than those wars waged by states in common civilizations.

The research empirically finding Huntington’s theory to be wrongheaded continued to mount. A 2006 European Journal of International Relations paper found that “violence is more likely among states with similar ties, even when controlling for other determinants of conflict.” Other scholars took aim at particular aspects of Huntington’s thesis. In a 2009 article in the British Journal of Political Science , two political scientists looked at data to assess civilizational clashes not in terms of war but in terms of terrorism. The Clash had gained renewed attention following 9/11 after all, and Huntington had cited jihadist terrorism against the West as evidence of his thesis. “Significantly more terrorism is targeted against nationals of the same country than against those of other countries,” they found. Examining Huntington’s most controversial claim, they concluded that there was “no significant effect with respect to terrorism from the Islamic civilization against nationals of all other civilizations in general.” As for migrants, a 2003 report in Comparative Political Studies crunched the numbers and determined that “diasporas and immigrants did not increase intercivilizational conflicts.” Later studies have confirmed these shortcomings and added more.

Not all academic research pointed away from Huntington. A 2010 article in the journal Cooperation and Conflict buttressed several components of Huntington’s theory, looking at wars between states from 1989 to 2004. “The findings illustrate that Western countries paired with a country from any other civilization, in particular the Islamic bloc, increases the likelihood of violent international conflict,” it read.

But the analysis was an outlier: Most studies empirically testing Huntington’s argument found the data lacking. Peer-reviewed studies aside, the world’s conflicts demonstrate the failures of Huntington’s thesis. Huntington’s wrongheaded belief that the Muslim world would unite in response to what was then called the war on terrorism revealed his limited understanding of the divisions among, and motivations of, the hundreds of millions of people in Muslim-majority countries, who are as divided along nationalist, ethnic, and intra-religious lines as any other civilization. Similarly, by far the deadliest war of the twenty-first century so far has been the Second Congo War, which lasted from 1998 to 2003. Most of the three million people killed in the war were civilians. The ongoing Syrian Civil War has claimed the lives of more than 300,000 civilians. That number is similar to the number of people killed in Sudan in the war that began in 2003. These three wars top the list of the worst conflicts of the twenty-first century, and they have something in common: they were largely fought within civilizations.

And then there is the Russo-Ukrainian War, the conflict with the most potential to escalate into a nuclear exchange. In The Clash , Huntington argued specifically that the future relationship between Russia and Ukraine would serve as a test of his theory. He rebutted John Mearsheimer’s claim that the two countries were headed for conflict because of a long, undefended border, a history of mutual enmity, and Russian nationalism. “A civilizational approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the close cultural, personal, and historical links between Russia and Ukraine and the intermingling of Russians and Ukrainians in both countries, and focuses instead on the civilizational fault line that divided Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine, a central historical fact of long standing,” Huntington wrote. “While a statist approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian War, a civilizational approach minimizes that and instead highlights the possibility of Ukraine splitting in half, a separation which cultural factors would lead one to predict might be more violent than that of Czechoslovakia but far less bloody than that of Yugoslavia.” Here as elsewhere, the civilizational approach proved demonstrably, even catastrophically wrong, highlighting the limits of a perspective that overemphasizes the role of culture in world affairs. Putin might eventually conquer some of eastern Ukraine, but that occurrence wouldn’t result from some civilizational kinship. “By May 2022, only 4 percent in Ukraine’s east and 1 percent in the south still had a positive view of Russia,” according to an analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Amazingly, people who had called themselves Russians living in Ukraine are now patriotic Ukrainians. “Cultural and historical preferences have also changed dramatically. Sixty-eight percent of respondents from the south and 53 percent from the east now describe Ukrainian as their native language,” the Carnegie analysis found, consistent with other studies. These evolutions illustrate how cultural identities are far more malleable than Huntington suggested.

But even as research and events have discredited Huntington’s argument, it has found important adopters among the far right worldwide. Steve Bannon, the influential adviser to the Trump administration, has adopted variations of the ideas, saying, “If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers … kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places.” No wonder that Trump’s White House extensively limited immigration, singled out Muslim refugees as primed for violence, overstated the threat posed by jihadist terrorists, and made defending an apparently embattled American civilization fundamental to its worldview.

Beyond the United States, right-wing figures globally increasingly used the language of clashing civilizations. Pim Fortuyn, a pioneer in the far-right populist crusade against Islam, represented himself as “the Samuel Huntington of Dutch politics.” Russian leader Putin styles himself as the defender of Christendom, saying “Euro-Atlantic countries” were “rejecting their roots,” which included the “Christian values” that were the “basis of Western civilization.” Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has become the de facto leader of Christian conservatives, told an American conference of right-wingers that “Western civilization” was under attack by people who hated Christians and globalists who “want to give up on Western values and create a new world, a post-Western world.”

Huntington likely would have despised some of his new fans. He was a nationalist who was skeptical of immigration, but he was simultaneously a small- d democrat who devoted his life to defending America’s interests and its democratic system. Most importantly, he wanted to avoid the clash of civilizations he foresaw, not provoke one, as people like Bannon are eager to do. Praise for a violent, anti-Western dictator like Putin is unimaginable coming from him. But however inadvertently, Huntington furthered the cause of far-right populists everywhere by giving them a language and academic cover for their apocalyptic, xenophobic sentiments. These reactionaries have targeted Muslims and migrants with brutal rhetoric and actions, fueling the global, cultural, and religious tensions that Huntington wanted to reduce. But that is the thing about theories: Sometimes they clash with the real world, to disastrous effect.

Jordan Michael Smith has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post .

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The “Clash of Civilizations” Thesis Is Still Ignorant Nonsense

Mentally arranging the world into homogeneous “civilizations” makes us oblivious to the world’s complexity as well as to our shared humanity with those considered mysterious Others.

Nathan J. Robinson

“In 2005, Maj. Daniel Lovett, a field artillery officer with the Tennessee National Guard, reported for pre-deployment training at Camp Shelby, a sprawling base in southern Mississippi that dated to World War I. During cultural awareness class, the instructor opened the PowerPoint presentation by saying, “All right, when you get to Iraq.” Lovett interrupted to say his unit was headed to the other war, but the instructor responded: ‘ Oh, Iraq, Afghanistan. It’s the same thing.’ ” — Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers

In the New York Times , opinion columnist Ross Douthat has made the case for reviving one of the worst ideas ever to come out of American political science : the “clash of civilizations” thesis promoted by the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington. In 1993, New York Times. " rel="footnote">1 Huntington put forward his claims :

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Huntington said that divisions between the “First World,” “Second World,” and “Third World” were a relic of the Cold War and “no longer relevant.” Instead, countries should be grouped “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.” The world was divided into distinctive cultures, and these cultures were so different that they would inevitably come into severe conflict.

Huntington divided the world up into civilizations as follows:

This was a fairly odd way of understanding the world. All sub-Saharan Africans are lumped together as “African civilization,” except for Muslim-majority areas, which are Islamic rather than African. “Japan” is a civilization, although both North Korea and South Korea are part of the same civilization, “Sinic.” Being “Orthodox” separates Russia from the “West,” and Lithuania is in a different civilization from Ukraine, but Finland and Italy are part of the same civilization. The eastern half of New Guinea is in the West while the western half is not. Spanish-speaking Catholic-majority Spain is West, while Spanish-speaking Catholic-majority Mexico is not part of Western civilization, and instead belongs with Brazil as part of Latin American civilization.

If you look at the map and think these divisions make sense, which you might, it is because what you are mostly seeing here is a map of prejudices. This map indeed shows how a lot of people think of the world, especially in America, and if you asked the average American to divide up the “civilizations” (or you could say “races”) of the world, this is probably roughly what they would produce, and it measures the extent to which we perceive differences. “Africans” are a homogeneous lump, and North Africans don’t count as Africans. Afghanistan and Iraq are all kind of part of the same thing, Islam.

Edward Said, the Palestinian scholar famous for his work exposing Orientalism, pointed out in a blistering demolition of Huntington’s idea that the whole Civilizations notion erased all of the differences among people in these areas, differences that often meant far more to the people themselves than their “shared” civilization. Labels like “Islam” and “the West,” Said said, “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality that won’t be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that.” Huntington wanted to jettison class analysis for “cultural difference” but Said believed that “it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis.” Jeffrey Haynes of London Metropolitan University concludes likewise in a retrospective evaluation of the thesis that “anyone who takes seriously the idea of a world divided into seven or eight major civilizations lacks capacity to have any possible understanding of our fascinating mosaic of a world filled with myriad ideas, norms, beliefs and conceptions of how the world is.”

Indeed, Huntington’s concept was in vogue after 9/11, his book becoming a bestseller after the attacks . Many commentators echoed the idea that “The West” was at war with “Islam.” This was a disastrously erroneous interpretation of what had happened. Al-Qaeda was a small criminal gang that had originated in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region; it adhered to a fringe ideology. But seeing these countries and Iraq as “Islamic” meant it made sense to lump together Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. U.S. policymakers were also completely ignorant of the sectarian divides in Iraq. Indeed, many Muslims were outraged by the Huntington thesis. In 2001, Johns Hopkins political scientist Fouad Ajami commented that “for Huntington to say that there is an Islamic civilization, he has to impose an unbelievable uniformity on the world of Islam, all the way from Morocco in the west to Indonesia.” Ahmed M. Abozaid, in Contemporary Arab Affairs, straightforwardly concludes that “Huntington’s propositions were biased and politically prejudiced against non-Western cultural, ethical, and religious societies.” ( An entire book of Asian responses to Huntington was published in 1997.) Huntington acknowledged that there were differences within civilizations, of course (in fact, he explicitly advocated that the West should “exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states”). But by saying that the most important thing about all Muslim countries is that they are Muslim countries , and that we should fundamentally define people in accordance with his schema, he encouraged two-dimensional thinking about the world.

Huntington insisted he was only describing rather than advocating the “clash of civilizations.” But he advocated that Westerners act as if it was true, saying that we should “limit the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states … moderate the reduction of Western military capabilities, and maintain military superiority in East and Southwest Asia.” The more people believe his theory and act as if it is true, the more it becomes true, because the “Western” countries may well develop a shared identity and wage war against “Islam.” Islamic studies professor Akbar Ahmed said that when he went to Morocco and Pakistan after Huntington’s theory became popular, people he met there “were saying the West wants a war with Islam. I would say, how do you come to this conclusion? And they would say, the leading Harvard professor wants a war with Islam. … It was becoming dangerously self-fulfilling.”

Noam Chomsky commented dismissively on the theory, saying that after the Cold War “everybody is flailing around for some paradigm, some big idea you can use to control people,” and with Soviet communism gone, Islam was a useful bogeyman. (Chomsky also noted that the theory allowed the United States to conveniently ignore its friendliness with the Islamic fundamentalist government of Saudi Arabia.) Pakistani political scientist Memoona Sajjad contends that :

Huntington shares Orientalism’s fundamental perceptions of what it characterizes as the ‘Other’, who traditionally happens to be the Arab-Muslim subject of analysis. … The real agenda underlying the thesis presented by Huntington is perpetuating Western dominance and hegemony on the globe after the Communist enemy had been vanquished, through the creation of a new enemy and the generation of fear and hatred against it in the public mind.

Now that the threat of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremist groups on United States soil has receded—along withthe disturbing post-9/11 war fever—one might think the “clash of civilizations” idea would finally be dead. Alas, it’s back again , thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s attempt to unify Ukraine and Russia (the fierce Ukrainian resistance to this reunification suggests that the people considered part of the same “civilization” do not concur that they are in it.) Douthat, in the New York Times , says it is time to haul the concept out of the ash heap of history and start using it again. He writes that “the Huntington thesis would seem ripe for new attention in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the surprisingly unified Western response, the more uncertain reactions from China and India.” He concedes that Huntington got much wrong, but says that “if you want to understand the direction of global politics right now, the Huntington thesis is more relevant than ever.” (Unnecessary emphasis Douthat’s.) Douthat elaborates:

The last decade, on the other hand, has made Huntington’s predictions of civilizational divergence look much more prescient. It isn’t just that American power has obviously declined relative to our rivals and competitors, or that our post-9/11 efforts to spread Western values by force of arms so often came to grief. The specific divergences between the world’s major powers have also followed, in general ways, the civilizational patterns Huntington sketched out. China’s one-party meritocracy, Putin’s uncrowned czardom, the post-Arab Spring triumph of dictatorship and monarchy over religious populism in the Middle East, the Hindutva populism transforming Indian democracy—these aren’t just all indistinguishable forms of “autocracy,” but culturally distinctive developments that fit well with Huntington’s typology, his assumption that specific civilizational inheritances would manifest themselves as Western power diminishes, as American might recedes. And then, just as tellingly, the region where this recent divergence has been weaker, the post-Cold War wave of democratization more resilient, is Latin America, about which Huntington acknowledged some uncertainty whether it deserved its own civilizational category, or whether it essentially belonged with the United States and Western Europe. (He chose the former; the latter seems more plausible today.)

For a full explanation of the problems with Douthat’s analysis, one can read the reply written by Matthew Yglesias, who notes that “it can be hard to distinguish the Clash of Civilizations hypothesis from the more banal hypothesis that Russia and China are big important countries that don’t like to be bossed around.” The core problem with the “clash of civilizations” theory is that it illuminates very little (what does it have to say about the conflict between China and Taiwan?) but does risk flattening the world in dangerous ways. “Orientalist” type ideas that view other people as so culturally different that they are a mystifying Other are both wrong and deadly. They are wrong because people around the world are, generally speaking, a lot more like ourselves than we realize. They are deadly because they lead to the devaluing of the lives of those outside our perceived civilizational community, because we believe it is that community whose “interests” we should advance.

Huntington was a nasty piece of work. Perhaps his most famous other writing was The Crisis of Democracy (co-authored with Michel Crozier and Joji Watanuki), in which they memorably argued that the United States suffered from an “excess of democracy” and that the country was going haywire because the population was becoming too involved in governance of the country, and worried about the destabilizing effects of letting marginalized people participate in the system:

The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively. Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political system. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands which extend its functions and undermine its authority still remains. Less marginality on the part of some groups thus needs to be replaced by more self-restraint on the part of all groups.

Some ideas are toxic. They damage our thinking and anyone who subscribes to them and acts based on them is more likely to do harm. Notions like “too much democracy” and “clash of civilizations” have been presented as interesting academic theories to be debated, but when taken seriously by those with power, they can be used to justify repression and war. It is unfortunate to see an idea that should have long since been buried make its way to the op-ed pages of The Paper of Record. But many bad ideas refuse to die, because they provide convenient stories to help us make sense of the world . They also help justify prejudices, and add a veneer of scientific respectability to what should be treated as bigotry and ignorance.

Not, as Douthat says, 1996. 1996 was when a book-length version was published, but by that time Huntington’s theory had already spawned responses. The error is worth noting mainly because Douthat does not seem to have glanced at the vast literature critiquing the idea before writing a newspaper column endorsing it. One of the encouraging tips I give to young writers who lack self-confidence is that however bad they may think their writing is, there is no way it can possibly be worse than the opinion columns printed in the New York Times. ↩

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(PDF) Clash of Civilizations Thesis: Some Reflections
Summary Of "The Clash Of Civilizations" By Samuel Huntington eBook by
(PDF) THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS; A CRITIQUE
Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations Free Essay Example
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Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations Today
The Clash of Ideas: Thesis vs Antithesis, Exploring Karl Marx's Theory
Just Another Day of Riots and Looting for "Peace" in Gaza
Islamophobia: Rationalizing an Irrational Fear
What is Clash of Civilizations| Samuel P. Huntington|

COMMENTS

Clash of Civilizations
The "Clash of Civilizations" is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in ...
The Clash of Civilizations
In political science: Systems analysis …in 1993 and a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, published in 1996, used cultural theory to propose that the emerging international system constituted a "clash of civilizations."Several civilizations, each based mostly on religion, variously clashed and cooperated. The worst clashes, he argued, took…
Introduction: The "Clash of Civilizations" and Relations between the
The contributors seek to explicate both theoretical and empirical examinations of Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' thesis in relation to the West. Our initial premise is that in the quarter century since Huntington first aired his controversial framework, inter-civilizational 'clash' and 'dialogue' have become mainstream ...
Opinion
In 1993, he published a sensational essay in Foreign Affairs called "The Clash of Civilizations?". The essay, which became a book, argued that the post-cold war would be marked by ...
Summary of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is an expansion of the 1993 Foreign Affairs article written by Samuel Huntington that hypothesized 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 'Clash of Civilizations' Today: Responses and Developments
This is an excerpt from The 'Clash of Civilizations' 25 Years On: ... in contrast to the 'clash of civilizations' thesis which stresses the lack of moderation and common ground between civilizations - but also because they explicitly expose incorrect, entrenched perceptions, such as: Islam is incapable of change; Islam is a violent ...
The Clash of Civilizations Thesis: A Critical Appraisal
According to Muhammad Asadi, the clash of civilizations thesis is dismantled historically as soon as we realise that it is nothing new. It is the same Cold War methodology rebranded for maximum impact, a contrived clash that the US was pursuing for several decades by converting an old ally into foe post-World War Two.
The Clash of Civilizations: a Critical Analysis
The Clash of Civilizations: A Criticai Analysis. described by him during the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and. most of the 20th century until the end of the Cold War has. been divided into three phases. The first phase, he says, are wars largely of princes in which monarchs, absolute.
Full article: The 'Clash of Civilisations' Thesis as a Tool for
The Clash of Civilisations thesis contends that the fundamental source of conflict in the post‐Cold War world will be cultural rather than ideological or economic. Footnote 1 The key features of this thesis will be identified and examined in order to assess its validity.
Happy anniversary? Reflections on Samuel Huntington's "clash" thesis at
This article takes a retrospective look at the controversial "clash-of-civilizations" thesis articulated by Samuel Huntington in the early 1990s. In some respects, the "pearl anniversary" of the thesis reveals it to have stood up reasonably well. If one notable aspect of the Huntingtonian prognosis was its skepticism about the prospects ...
Huntington's Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations is perhaps his most notable work, and it has enjoyed an outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy. This influence did not come without controversy, and the work remains ...
Revisiting S.P. Huntington's 'The Clash of Civilizations' thesis
ABSTRACT. The point of departure in this chapter is Niall Ferguson's 2006 claim that 'as works of prophecy go' S.P. Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' thesis has been 'a real winner.'. This claim is examined in the light both of the persistent scholarly verdict that the thesis is deeply flawed, and its continued public and ...
Why are We Still Talking about the "Clash of Civilizations"? Anne
Norton's book constitutes a robust addition to the genre of scholarship that contests the "clash of civilizations" thesis. There is good reason for this continued response. There are still many in the academy and at think tanks and other sites of cultural production who affirm Huntington's racist and jingoistic argument. This argument ...
The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel P Huntington
In India the clash between Muslims and Hindus. Huntington believes that there will increasingly be clashes between civilizations, because these identities are based mainly on ethnicity and religion, and thus foster an 'us and them' type of identity. Increasingly, political leaders will draw on 'civilization identity' in order to try and ...
What We Get Wrong About the Clash of Civilizations
Emma Ashford reviews the thesis of Samuel Huntington's 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. She also looks at some of the responses it has received, both positive and negative. She finds that Huntington's thesis, while rough in itself, is apt to be simplified still further by policymakers.
What is the Clash of Civilizations?
The Clash of Civilizations was a theory developed in the 1990s that warned of a dystopian-like clash between major world ideologies. The history of the world is rife with internal and external conflicts. However, not every one of these wars could be called a "clash of civilization". The Clash of Civilization was a 1996 book written by American ...
(PDF) The Ideological Function of the Huntington's Thesis about Clash
This paper calls into question the fruitfulness as well as the ability of Huntington's thesis about the clash of civilizations to offer an adequate conceptual, theoretical and methodological framework for explaining the armed conflicts at the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century, using the analysis of the war in Kosovo and Metohija as an example.
The 'Clash of Civilizations' Thesis: Findings from International Crises
These results, the authors claim, challenge Huntington's claims and seriously undermine the policy recommenda-tions that devolve from his clash of civilizations thesis.6 In this study we, too, test the civilizations thesis, this time focussing on international crises during the 1918-1994 period. In doing.
Teaching Roundtable 11-6 on The Clash of Civilizations in the IR
Though Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis has been largely demonstrated to be an inaccurate depiction of conflict, the concept of civilizations can be a useful case study to help students evaluate the formation and importance of identities. In particular, this essay has focused on encouraging students to consider how civilizations are ...
Islam & the West: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis
In seeking to understand the root causes of the events of 9/11 many accounts have turned to Samuel P. Huntington's provocative and controversial thesis of a "clash of civilizations", arousing strong debate. Evidence from the 1995-2001 waves of the World Values Study provide survey evidence allowing us, for the first time, to sift the truth in ...
Huntington's Liberal Heirs
"The Clash of Civilizations" prefigures the liberal internationalist ... is that U.S. policy must employ a better analytical lens than the democracy vs. autocracy thesis and other such ...
Samuel Huntington's Great Idea Was Totally Wrong
Chinese leaders recently proposed an "equality of civilizations" in place of the West's clash, according to The Economist, which reported a diplomat lamenting that "the antiquated thesis ...
PDF The Clash of Civilizations?
countering responses from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to mobilize support and form coalitions on the basis of ideology, gov. ernments and groups will increasingly attempt to mobilize support by. appealing to common religion and civilization identity. The clash of civilizations thus occurs at two levels.
The "Clash of Civilizations" Thesis Is Still Ignorant Nonsense
The "Clash of Civilizations" Thesis Is Still Ignorant Nonsense. Mentally arranging the world into homogeneous "civilizations" makes us oblivious to the world's complexity as well as to our shared humanity with those considered mysterious Others. "In 2005, Maj. Daniel Lovett, a field artillery officer with the Tennessee National ...
Huntington's Liberal Heirs
Few contemporary geopolitical theories have proven as influential beyond their immediate context as Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis. Focused on the cultural and religious fault lines that Huntington believed would set the stage for a new round of intractable conflicts following the Soviet collapse, the Clash of Civilizations was a sobering rejoinder to globalization at a ...

The Clash of Civilizations

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The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel P Huntington

What are ‘Civilizations’?

Clashes between civilizations

Religion as a more significant cause of conflict…

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