Clash of Civilizations Essay

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In Huntington’s (1993) essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” the political scientist posited that whereas nation states had been aligned previously on cultural terms in the past, in the coming years of the modern world these terms would become disjointed as various cultures emerged or re-asserted themselves. Along these cultural lines, the discourse of modern politics would be situated. In other words, Huntington (1993) viewed the cultures of various civilizations serving as the source of conflict in the coming era. Conflict would not be driven by economics or geopolitical aims but rather by the cultures of the world’s civilizations. This paper will compare and contrast Huntington’s thesis with thesis by Inglehart and Norris (2003) who, in the wake of 9/11, re-assessed Huntington’s idea and found it be half-right; it will argue that Huntington’s thesis remains the correct one and that Inglehart and Norris (2003) are too focused on the minutiae and therefore miss the main point of Huntington’s thesis.

Inglehart and Norris (2003) concede that culture plays a part in the differences between the Western world and the Muslim world, but they pinpoint a precise issue that serves as the ultimate wedge between the two: sex. The researchers state that “according to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights—which many not bode well for democracy’s future in the Middle East” (p. 63). This argument by Inglehart and Norris (2003) is patently absurd because the West for many years was considered to embrace democratic principles yet it never held the views and attitudes it currently holds towards sex, divorce, abortion or gender equality and gay rights that it holds today.

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If these are the bulwark of democracy, the Founding Fathers certainly did not view it so. This over-emphasis on sex as the wedge between two warring cultures—the West and the Muslim Middle East—is telling in the sense that it represents the Western obsession with liberal ideas or rather with a liberalized culture that drives the political discourse of the nations’ leaders. This discourse is rejected by nations who do not share the same liberalized culture or liberal ideals—and that is the underlying point of Huntington’s thesis: the wars of tomorrow will be fought upon cultural grounds. Attitudes towards sex are but one manifestation of this culture and the cultural beliefs….....

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