| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
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UPDATE December 17, 2005: Certain parties are trying to make use of selected quotes from this article to attempt to discredit Jihad Watch, Mr. Fitzgerald, and me. For a clarification of my -- and our -- position on these matters, please see here. -- Robert Spencer
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores some of the limitations of the increasingly common "clash of civilizations" paradigm.
The phrase "clash of civilizations," made famous by Samuel Huntington, is misleading. In Huntington's formulation (he owed an unacknowledged good deal to Adda Bozeman, who taught at Sarah Lawrence in the days when Kurt Rausch taught painting to well-bred young women and Randall Jarrell was taking notes for "Pictures from an Institution"), there are the Sinic, the Orthodox, the Hindu, the Islamic, the Western, and so on. And these are all potentially clashing. But this is nonsense. There is only one clash that counts: that of Islam with all of non-Islam. If, in the future, China and America were to go to war, it would not be because the former is "Sinic" and the latter "Christian" or "Western" or somesuch, but because of perceived Great-Power rivalries -- for China and America are now part of the same civilization, the shared, modern, universal civilization, with disagreements at the edges, but nothing like the clash between Islam and all Infidels. In fact, a war between China and America would be about power, and thus no different from, for example, the rivalry, ending in war, between Germany and England in the pre-1914 period.It is interesting to note, meanwhile, that Arab and Muslim analysts around the world tend to prefer the phrase "clash of civilizations" -- because it avoids the truthful description of the conflict as one motivated by a belief-system, the belief-system of Islam. And it also gives the impression that America or "the West" or Western Christian or Western post-Christian civilization are the enemy, while in reality the global Islamic jihad is as much directed at Hindus and Buddhists, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, and the non-Muslim black Africans, as it is against the much more powerful, and therefore more dangerous, United States of America.
Bassam Tibi epitomizes the confusion caused by clash of civilizations talk, and the difficulties to which it gives rise. Tibi is a Syrian, married to a German, who is Muslim in name only. And he has many virtues. But imagination is not among them. When he posits only two possibilities -- Europe becoming thoroughly islamized, or Islam becoming Europeanized -- he shows that limited imagination. When he offers the possibility of Islam becoming Europeanized, he fails to discuss what that would mean. Would it mean simply Muslims wearing Western dress? Throwing out the hadith? Throwing out the hadith and the sira (going beyond the Ancient Mariner, would Tibi have them stoppeth two of three)? Throwing out all of the sira, and all of the hadith, and then in addition throwing out traditional conclusions of the interpreters of the Qur’an -- in a kind of reverse abrogation, in which all the softer verses are now kept and the harsher ones removed, instead of the other way around as mainstream Muslim Qur’an commentators now have it? Just how is this to be done? Who would do it? A committee? What committee? And how would it acquire sufficient authority to command belief from -- Believers?No, there is another way, or many other ways. And the first way is to put a complete stop to Muslim immigration, and to find creative ways to deport all Muslim non-citizens. These two measures would be accompanied by the creation of an environment where the practice of Islam is made not easy but difficult. Meanwhile, authorities would engage in wholesale efforts to explain, both to the population of Europe and to the Muslims in its midst, the real nature of Islam. They would explain why it is encourages despotism (because allegiance is owed the ruler as long as he is a Muslim), economic paralysis (the fatalism of Islam -- just look at the "wake-me-when-it's-over" attitude of the Iraqis as the American soldiers struggle to rebuild, or build, a country that is populated by people who in the main are innately and immutably hostile to Infidels, but want to be transformed by those Infidels into New York -- and in a New York minute), intellectual failure (the cult of authority, the hostility to free and skeptical inquiry) and moral failure (the bland acceptance of the division of the world between Believer and Infidel, and the belief that it is right, it is just, to treat the Infidel, no matter what, as an inferior being and an enemy no matter how generous and open-hearted he may be, for after all he remains an Infidel, and not even to grasp the possibility that Infidel peoples and polities, too, no matter how small, deserve to survive, and to possess rights that do not depend on Muslims).
Then one might engage in efforts to convert the Muslims of Europe -- persistent efforts that would either work in some cases, or drive those who were worried or offended to leave Europe for "safer" regions in the dar al-Islam. Both results are desirable. And both would make it clear just what kind of a "clash of civilizations" is now in the offing.
Posted by Robert at October 9, 2005 8:30 AM
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Bassam Tibi is an interesting case, since he's one of the very few individuals who is probably a genuine Muslim reformist, not just a taqiyya-bot such as Tariq Ramadan. The problem is that although I do not doubt his sincerity, as Irshad Manji, he doesn't really make a convincing case HOW Islam can be reformed. The few Muslim moderates that do exist remind me of the alchemists in the Middle Ages, trying to turn stone into gold. They failed, not because of a lack of trying, but because the task at hand simply wasn't possible.
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at October 9, 2005 9:12 AM
Reform Islam? How and by whom and why? The majority of the Muslim world is content with Islam as it is and as it always has been.
Posted by: epg at October 9, 2005 10:43 AM
The few Muslim moderates that do exist remind me of the alchemists in the Middle Ages, trying to turn stone into gold. They failed, not because of a lack of trying, but because the task at hand simply wasn't possible.
True. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. (Ooops! Gratuitiously offensive mention of pigs there...)
I like Irshad Manji and think she's very brave. However, although she's critical of the Koran, she can't seem to bring herself to criticise Mohammed. There are two things wrong with Islam - the Koran and Mohammed. Oh, and the Hadith. And the Sira. And Sharia. Apart from that, it's a great religion...
Posted by: Interested at October 9, 2005 11:31 AM
This is most certainly not a clash of civilizations! It is a clash of barbarians against civilization. We saw what happened the last time the barbarians stormed the gates, 700 years of the Dark Ages. And the Jihad is comming to a theater near you soon, so we must be prepared to take on the enemy.
Posted by: Sharku at October 9, 2005 12:18 PM
Huntington also coined the phrase, "bloody borders of Islam".
Reform of Islam is conceivable but it would require an authority equal to that of Muhammed, i.e., rasul. Over the centuries there have been a few attempts by individuals to rise with a claim of such authority, the most recent example being the 19th century Babi and Bahai movements in Persia. The Babi followers were brutally put down by Muhammad Shah and his son Nasiri'd-Din Shah attempted to extinguish the Bahai movement that arose in the immediate wake of the Babi suppression.
The Bahai movement eschews the doctrine of jihad, proclaims the equality of men and women (though the highest legislative and judicial body in the Bahai ideology excludes women from its membership), claims that all religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Tao, Judaism, Christianity, etc. are equally valid, and above all for the purposes of the current discussion, claims the authority to abrogate the Islamic canon in its entirety.
Whether the Bahai movement can succeed in tempering the aggression of the Islamic world is yet to be seen. Its mere existence and its ability to survive and even grow within the ummah itself, is cause for hope that somewhere along the line it may be possible for some meaningful reform movement to achieve the critical mass that will ultimately neutralize the threat of the Islamic ideology to the welfare of humanity.
The counterweight to this hope is that it may take several centuries to achieve. In the meantime, all we who are directly threatened by the Islamic jihad inspired violence can do, is what our ancestors did for more than a thousand years: dictate terms of ceasefire agreements with the mouths of our cannons.
Posted by: DrMack at October 9, 2005 12:24 PM
DrMack, you're probably right about the Bahais. I believe the Ismailis and the Ahmadis are also more compatible with pluralist, civilised societies. However, these movements seem to be regarded as heretical - perhaps apostate is a better word - and their followers are often persecuted.
Posted by: Interested at October 9, 2005 12:48 PM
About this prescription proferred by Hugh -- "to put a complete stop to Muslim immigration, and to find creative ways to deport all Muslim non-citizens"
I would add his other remark -- "(going beyond the Ancient Mariner, would Tibi have them stoppeth two of three)?"
I.e., why not deport all Muslim citizens as well?
at October 9, 2005 1:54 PM
Damn! You just blew Huntington away! And he's at Harvard, isn't he?
Posted by: Benjamin at October 9, 2005 2:24 PM
"And he's at Harvard, isn't he?'
-- from a posting above
So what?
Posted by: Hugh at October 9, 2005 3:26 PM
Reform islam? No. islam Is not our problem. islam Can reform itself, at its own expense, in its own time. America owes islam Nothing.
Meanwhile, quaratine islam; deport the muslims already here.
If, in one thousand years, muslims have learned how to behave like civilized people, we might reconsider our postion. On the other hand, why bother? America owes islam Nothing.
No muslims. No mosques.
Posted by: Havoc at October 9, 2005 3:46 PM
Oppose and get rid of these fools.
Its not for us to solve their problems,
only to identify them and send them back to the paradise of these many tin pot Muslin dictatorships.
And as the mosques here are 80-90% radicalized,
BULLDOZE THEM.
at October 9, 2005 4:07 PM
The term "Clash of Civilizations" and the "Global War on Terror" are short-sighted and misleading. I think Fitzgerald and I agree on that.
But, Fitzgerald and I differ when he states that the "truthful description of the conflict as one motivated by a belief-system, the belief-system of Islam".
Au contraire, I think its far more complicated than that...
Islam is being exploited as a vehicle for fighting what many see as their continuing oppression of Muslims by non-Muslims and/or oppressive governments. Look at Thailand, Philippines, Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Kosovo, Muslims in Eurrope and so on. Conflicts there can be easily seen (true or not) as a conflict between non-Muslims and oppressed Muslims. Additionally, in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, Islam is seen as the alternative and solution to an otherwise corrupt and inept government system.
Unlike Christianity, Islam never built a wall between Church and State – so Islam is intimately seen as involved in all dimensions of human activity. This is why Islam can easily be seen as a political solution into itself and why an attack on a single Muslim can be see as an attack on entire socio-political and religious body – perhaps we can say “the Ummah”?
Additionally Islam does not “turn the other cheek” – but will risk using violence when being attacked.
So we see local movements in Kosovo, Chechnya etc under the Green banner uniting and linking up together with other movements – brought together as a united front. As Bush finally admitted we are at war with Islamofacist – but more than that, we are at war with a global and religiously-motivated utopian movement.
This is the nature of the threat.
And by the way Islam does not have the monopoly on being easily turned into vehicle of violence and terror. Judaism as an ethno-religion can be easily used as a substitute. Strict laws, "The Chosen People", "milchemet mitzvah" (obligatory war) and add to that wide spread anti-semitism are all the ingredients that can be twisted to the same ends.
at October 10, 2005 2:09 AM
One good bird's eye introduction to Islam is the story of the slaughter of the Banu Qurayzah on Andrew Bostom's homepage. Since this excessively fancy webpage is hard to read on some browsers, I have reproduced the story here:
http://orionnewsblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/legacy-of-jihad.html
Notice that it is not just what Mohammed did, but the legal tradition that resulted.
Bottom line: It goes quite a bit deeper than 'reaction to oppression'.
Benjamin
Posted by: Benjamin at October 10, 2005 1:52 PM
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