What Edward Said has to say is illuminating as well: Huntington is an intellectual serving the interests of the last superpower (he is actually quite frank about this) whose pre-eminence as a world power he is set on serving and maintaining. The real subject of his work therefore is not how to reduce the conflict of cultures, but how to turn them to American advantage, as a way of conceding to the United States the right to lead the whole world. Yet none of his grandiose rhetoric can conceal the fact that this style of thought derives from the same polluted source to be found in all cultures, the notion that my way of life, my traditions, my way of thinking, my religion or civilization can neither be shared with anyone nor understood by anyone who does not have the same religion, color of skin, etc. India, Pakistan, Bosnia, Ireland, South Africa, Lebanon and of course Israel-Palestine bear the ravages of such a logic, which in the end leads to more, not less narrowness, misunderstanding, violence. (The Uses of Culture, Dawn, February 24,1997)
Jochen Hipplier
Jochen Hipplier, author of The Next Threat: Western Perception of Islam, has said: By caricaturing different cultures, by arbitrarily and willfully misrepresenting Islamic societies we grant ourselves absolution. Others are fanatical, we are not. Other are irrational, we are not. Furthermore, it is clearly very important for us in the West to feel superior and to see Western culture as the 'best' and 'most' progressive.
The term civilization is usually used in the singular to mean Western civilization which since the eighteenth century has been in the West as the civilization that has set about to destroy and obliterate systematically all other civilizations including the Islamic.
To borrow from Hippler: In a certain sense you could call Huntington's argument 'culturally racist'. The Muslims (or Chinese) are different from us and therefore dangerous. Unlike in classic racism, this difference is not generically but culturally based. There is such a gulf between their values and ways of thinking and ours that understanding or cross-pollination is almost unthinkable. Only military solutions can promise result.
Hippler further elaborates this point very convincingly: Huntington's image of Islam (or of other Asian cultures) is hardly original. It follows the current stereotypes and cliche's of popular literature and some of the media. Yet he manages brilliantly to embellish these repeated fears pseudo-scientifically and elevate them ideologically. His success is in making the old cliches acceptable in foreign policy debate. For Huntington, Islam is ideologically hostile and anti-Western. It is also a military threat in itself due to Chinese (Confucian) arms supplies. Islam is bloody, with a long warring tradition against the West. (The fact that Muslims have often been the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence from Bosnia to India hardly troubles him.)
Stephen Walt
According to Stephen M. Walt, The Clash of Civilizations is also strangely silent about Israel, which has been a central concern for U.S. foreign policy since its founding in 1948. During the Cold War, U.S. support for Israel could be justified on both ideological and strategic grounds. From a cultural perspective, however, the basis for close ties between Israel and the "West" is unclear. Israel is not a member of the West (at least not by Huntington's criteria) and is probably becoming less "Western" as religious fundamentalism becomes more salient and as the Sephardic population becomes more influential. His silence on this issue may reflect an awareness that making this conclusion explicit would not enhance the appeal of the book, or Israel may simply be an anomaly that lies outside of his framework. In either case, however, the issue reveals a further limitation of the civilizational paradigm. [Building Up New Bogeyman by Stephen M. Walt- Foreign Policy, Spring 1997]
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