EmpireSamuel Huntington published an essay in 1996 based on foreign affairs and it was called “The Clash of Civilizations.” The essay argued that post-Cold War the world conflicts will not be primarily ideological or economic. The great division among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. He says that nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principle conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. Thus the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics and the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. In his argument he says there are no universal civilizations, instead there are cultural blocks that all have their own distinct set of values. According to him, civilizations are the highest grouping of people and they are differentiated by religion, history, language and traditions. Huntington argues that conflict is more likely to happen between civilizations than within them and that cultural identity is more fundamental to human beings than race and ideology. After looking back at some of Huntington’s arguments I am still not convinced that there is a “clash” but I do find this idea to be interesting.
I think that it is easy to look at attacks on the West, like in New York and think that it was more than a coincident. New York is not only the financial center of the West, it happens to be the largest Jewish city as well. One argument is that events such as the US invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, the war between the West and al Qaeda, and the acts of terrorism practiced by extremist and violent branches of Islam amount to the clash of civilizations. The opposing argument is that the clash is more within Islam itself. I agree with this argument and I think that the radical people that support Islam are giving the rest of the people a bad image. People in the West are too quick to call all Islamic people
The writer:
I have read a lot of criticism of the current anti-Muslim hysteria in Egypt. They say the attacks on Arab and Muslim citizens are being driven by Islam but I’ve never heard of a violent one ever in the West; they’re just part of a wider phenomenon of anti-Muslim rhetoric by many.
I think that it is only around the 9/11 attacks from 2001 and 2004 that I have seen that very much come out of the West in terms of a backlash against people who are too conservative to accept Islam. They come out of fear, anger, anger at Muslims in the United States, as well as others in the Muslim world. These people just know that if they don’t take responsibility for every attack, they will. However, they will always be caught in the act of going somewhere. So if that doesn’t put a stop to their bigotry, I think those who do find it a more difficult job will also find themselves labeled a bigot. You may be in Egypt now, but you can still live in Egypt now, and the government they set up is very conservative and very anti-Muslim in its ways and often more concerned with the people than with the country.
The writer:
This is the most interesting critique from my friend George Gilead, author of The Myth of Modern Islam: The Story of the Islamic Renaissance.
He claims an all-powerful power — the power to change in one’s personal perception of the world via one’s own political, spiritual and political views. His arguments are pretty simple, in that they are: people in the West are too conservative and have a view of the world that differs from what everyone else believes.
And he tells the story from one of the very young people he has interviewed in his career in the Muslim world:
The story of modern Islam is based on the fear and fear people have that is present within Islam. I have had conversations with people in the Muslim world now and they tell me that, if you look closely we all know the basic beliefs of Islam. We don’t believe that it includes anyone else like us who disagrees with us. We also believe that it is the right thing to do, to do Islam, and to live as a Christian. We don’t believe that it is a religion that God wants to destroy or that they want to destroy Christianity. We believe that they want to kill Muslims and that we have to do that if they want to. We are saying if you can live as a Christian, if you want to live as a Christian, you should not believe in being Muslims, you should not believe in believing in any religion. However, if you look at it objectively, we all share the same basic beliefs, but every other form
I have no hesitation in saying you can and should be a great Christian. It is my belief that Islam is NOT a religion that is going to destroy, it is not going to come into existence, it is going to be absorbed. Let me be clear – there is no set, no dogma about Islam. All of the teachings and all of the laws in life are based on Islam. As such, this belief comes from within Islam. I am not asking for any personal judgment, I am asking you, please accept all your questions and then go ahead and go ahead with your life as a Christian, or any religion. I will not do this for anyone else. I am asking for respect and recognition. I am asking for respect and forgiveness that your life, your heart, your life is not meant to be something that I am going to do or say. You are not, you are not entitled to be part of this world that is.
The issue of Islam does include a huge number of different groups. Many religious, religious and nonreligious folks are living under a different, very difficult set of circumstances. There are different ways of thinking about what is happening around us and I will be addressing these and other issues of Islam in this blog post.
The story of secular Christianity has been growing up in different ways through the centuries and is slowly becoming more and more apparent to some Christians.
One that I have been keeping an eye on is the story of how the Roman emperor Constantine, who presided over numerous great changes to Christianity over the period of 600 BC to 1200 AD, is now trying to reestablish a different religion. This is very much a story I could tell you today.
Let me make the first general point about the story’s origins.
So, one of the things that happened at the start of the 12th century was the emergence of various sects that made up their own factions of Christians. One group was the “Babylonian and Chinese Christians”, and another was the Church of the Avesta. Those two groups had a common root: Christian and Muslim.
All of those factions grew together and formed religions. But the fact is that some of them were very different from each other, and those very different were known as the Copts. In the early Christian world, the Copts had three main factions; the Catholic Church, the Pharisees and the Confucianists. They were all very different, and when people began to get together, one side was the orthodox and the other the liberal, so there were very few distinctions.
The Copts were essentially a form of the Sephardim. The Sephardim had no rule at all. Those who came by train and came by boat to convert here and there were persecuted. The Copts were essentially a caste system. Each Coptic was the same, and they lived on a level of equality between those who converted and those who did not. They were all divided. They only had one type of family, the house of the orthodox — one or two sons. The one family was Christian. The second family was the other family that belonged to the orthodox sect for the rest, and their members were no different. The third or further one family was mixed, and many of them moved into the other family’s house. They would split up into sub-families that were separated from each