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Circles of Antagonism:
The Intellectual Idiom |
The demonization of Islam is also a significant theme in more serious intellectual circles.
Headlines of prestigious newspapers, magazine covers, the design of the book dustcovers as
well as the substance of journal and news articles contributed to this distortion. A sample
of such treatment is suggestive. As early as 1979 Peregine Worsethorne wrote in the Sunday
Telegraph of London:
Until this new threat from resurgent Islam is first understood in the context of the implacable
motives behind it, which transcend reason and materialism and encompass religion, revenge and
rage, can the proper and appropriate answers be found. Among those answers must be the
possible use of armed force. For to encourage resurgent Islam to assume that it can get
away with what amounts to a new style jihad, without its militancy being met by ours, this
would condemn Christendom to an ignoble fate, as much invited as deserved. [Sic]
In 1984, Amos Perlmutter who teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. and
is editor of the Journal of Strategic Studies warned of "a general Islamic war waged against
the West, Christianity, modern capitalism, Zionism and communism all at once…[O]ur
[the West's] war against Moslem populism is of the utmost priority, not the long term
struggle against the Soviet Union." Another influential analysis was the Atlantic Monthly
article by the well-known historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis. The word "rage" in
the title of Lewis' article, "The Roots of Muslim Rage" had also been used earlier by the
Los Angeles Times journalist, Robin Wright in her book, Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant
Islam. The evocative connotation of the term "rage" is self-evident. The eminent Russian
novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn similarly warned of the dangers to the West of a resurgent
Islam.
The covers of upscale periodicals have been another source of distortion. Two rather
dramatic examples are illustrative. The November 19, 1990 issue of The National Review
featured in bold half-inch headline type: "The Muslims Are Coming. The Muslims Are Coming."
Thus there is evoked the slogan ingrained in American history and allegedly shouted by Paul
Revere: "The British Are Coming." No less suggestive is the imagery of the popular movie
"The Russians Are Coming." It cannot be lost on the reader that the British and Russians
were enemies of Americans and, by association, so must be the Muslims. Accompanying the
headlines is a picture of an Arab camel race, which can easily be construed as Arab warriors
advancing in line of battle. Ironically the article in the magazine, by Daniel Pipes, is
moderate in tone and does not reflect the imagery of the cover. In a similar vein is the
cover of the July 26, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, which shows an Arab terrorist, destroying
a children's sand castle version of the World Trade Center in New York.
By far the most influential analysis of Islam as a probable enemy of the West is the
seminal and provocative article, "The Clash of Civilizations?" which appeared in the Summer
1993 issue of Foreign Affairs. The author, Samuel P. Huntington, is Eaton Professor of the
Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Center for Strategic Studies at Harvard
University. The significance of the article, sometimes compared to George F. Kennan's
influential essay on containment of the Soviet Union, signed as "X" and published in a 1947
issue of Foreign Affairs, was emphasized by an unusual publishing tactic. The
September/October 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs included a 22-page commentary on the essay by
well-known analysts. It was followed in the November/December 1993 issue with a response by
Huntington. This three-installment compilation continues to be available as a 57–page
reprint. There are plans for publication of an expanded book version of this essay.
While the paradigm (a term not found in the original article but used in his subsequent
response) constructed by Huntington embraced all civilizations, it emphasized Islam.
Competition of political units in the world, Huntington said, will no longer be among nations,
but between civilizations embracing groups of nations. These major civilizations include
Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and "possibly"
African civilization. The most provocative assertion is his characterization of the
"Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and
power." The danger of this nexus, he continues, is its reliance on nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, ballistic missiles and "other electronic capabilities" for delivering
such systems. Specifically, he means North Korea and China (Confucian) and Pakistan, Iran,
Iraq, Libya and Algeria. Although Huntington does not end his essay on an apocalyptic note,
his policy suggestions clearly reveal a basic fear of the Confucian-Islamic nexus. He
cautions that European, North American, Eastern European, Latin American and Russian
civilizations must cooperate and must maintain military superiority. They must exploit
differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states and must limit the increase in
their military strength. He moderates this Machiavellian stance by concluding that the West
must understand the religious and philosophical underpinnings of these civilizations and must
identify "elements of commonality" between them and the West.
The Huntington article was widely read, discussed and written about. The Muslim world
was particularly upset by the assertion that the "Confucian-Islamic connection" poses serious
security problems for the West. The extent of its influence can be suggested by several
Western references, some in accord and others in disagreement with the Huntington thesis.
Robert D. Kaplan, in his apocalyptic essay "The Coming Anarchy," modifying Huntington's
analysis, reinforces the possibility of an Islamic clash with the West. Kaplan admits that
there are fissures within the Muslim world, particularly in the Fertile Crescent and the
Caucasus. But environmental and demographic stress, added to Islamic militancy, cancels the
effects of these fissures so that the Islamic threat to the West becomes more probable.
In the only footnote in his book, Out of Control, Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledges
reading the unpublished manuscript of Huntington's essay while his book was in press. He
agrees with the fault lines and with the geographic element of the Huntington thesis in his
own analysis of the "oblong of violence." He arrives at a much less pessimistic conclusion
when he asserts that the "diversified Moslem world" is not ready to embark on with the
West and for America to act on that assumption would be "to run the risk of engaging in a
self-fulfilling prophesy." Former President Richard Nixon relates the Huntington thesis to
current conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovia and in Azerbaijan. He warns against ignoring conflicts
in which the Muslim world is victimized. In a sagacious comment he asserts that had Sarajevo
been Christian or Jewish, the West "would have acted quickly and would have been right in
doing so." Our failure to revoke the arms embargo against Bosnia "contributed to an image
promoted by extreme Muslim fundamentalists that the West is callous to the fate of Muslim
nations but protective of Jewish and Christian nations." While the Huntington prognosis may
not be inevitable, Western (and especially American) policy may well result in a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
One of the most carefully reasoned analyses of the alleged Muslim threat using
Huntington as a point of departure is the feature article by Associated Editor Brian
Beedham in The Economist. After criticizing Huntington's categories of civilization for
being too rigid, Beedham denies the inevitability of a Muslim-West civilizational clash.
The Muslim world can move confidently into the 21st century if it can solve three problems:
coping with a modern economy, accepting the idea of sexual equality, and absorbing the
principles of democracy. He makes a case for constructive mutual influence of Islam and the
West to recover its cultures, Islam can influence the West to recover its belief in the
"invisible life" and the West can help Islam to modernize. The two civilizations, he
concludes, will not converge but they need "no longer regard each other as, respectively,
amoral and fanatic."
The commentary on Huntington's essay appearing in the Foreign Affairs issue following
that of the original piece was uniformly a dissent. Civilizations are not watertight; states
are more powerful than civilizations and indeed control civilizations, tradition weakens in
the face of modernity. Other themes questioned Huntington's classification of civilizations,
characterized Islamic "hegemony" as a myth, marked the powerful global force of democracy and
the inevitability of the mixing and melding rather than the separation of civilizations.
My own analysis is in general agreement wit this commentary, but some of the themes
warrant further explanation. The formidable task of classifying, tracking and forecasting
the future of civilizations had challenged scholars for centuries. In modern ties the 995-page
magnum opus of Oswald Spenglerf: Decline of the West, first published in German in
1918 and in English eight years later, is a defining intellectual event. Though the two
terms are now used interchangeably, Spengler distinguished between "culture" and
"civilization." Culture is the soul and civilization the intellect. Civilization
emerges from culture; it is the destiny and structure of cultures. This point is
essential in understanding the changing nature of civilizations, which is my main
criticism of the Huntington thesis. Spengler's schema embraces seven cultures: Faustian,
Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Classical Arabian and Mexican. Like other analysts of civilization
who follow him, Spengler pays special attention, in three chapters totaling 138 pages, to
Islamic culture. Its culture is the most self-contained, the most clearly defined, in which
the "soul" is coterminous with the intellect, sentiment with structure; hence culture with its
structural outgrowth: civilization. Spengler is the most influential philosopher of
civilizations who makes this important distinction. The stimulating Russian thinker,
Nicolas Birdie, in the Epilogue to this book, The Meaning of History, asserts, "great
Russian thinkers of the past had already drawn the distinction between culture an
civilization" and makes a brilliant, clear exposition of this distinction. Arnold J. Toynbee,
who refers to Spengler briefly by criticizing his organismic analogy to culture, uses the
term "society". F.S.C. Northrop, making no reference to either Spengler or Toynbee, uses
the term "society" generously and exclusively.
Toynbee's monumental A Study of History divides the world into 233 societies only five
of which he found to exist at the time of his writing: Western Christendom, Orthodox
Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Far Eastern. The contribution which Toynbee makes to the
study of civilizations is to direct attention to the kaleidoscopic quality of change
stunningly demonstrated by the reduction of 23 societies to five. The transformation
of civilization is further explained by this complex matrix of "culture radiation and
reception," which establishes the concept that change in civilization is not unidirectional
but is reciprocal and circular.
The seminal studies of Northrop are unfortunately much less widely known than those
of Spengler and Toynbee. Northrop's aim, especially in his The Meeting of East and West,
is somewhat less metaphysically obscure than that of either Spengler or Toynbee. He seeks
to overcome ideological conflicts by tracing global problems to their roots and resolving
them "in theory, within the calmness of the study." This is understandable when we consider
that the book was published in 1946, at the end of World War II, and at the beginning of the
Cold War with its threat of nuclear annihilation. Northrop's catalog of civilizations is
more precise and clearer than that of Spengler and Toynbee. It is free of the Teutonic
and mystical underpinnings of the former and the rich, deep historical context of the
latter. The Northrop analysis is profoundly grounded not only in philosophic understanding
of the other cultures, but on intuitive comprehension of what he calls the all-embracing,
aesthetic continuum. He divides the contemporary world into seven cultures: Islamic, Hindu,
Latin American, Anglo-American, Mexican, Western and Eastern (Oriental). Like Spengler and
Toynbee before him, especially like Spengler, Northrop emphasizes the intuitive artistic and
religious components of culture. Northrop carries the earlier concepts of Spengler and
Toynbee to a new threshold by emphasizing the mutability of cultures and the intricacies
of their interrelationships. Acknowledging this, he seeks to find the ideological bases
for their compatibility. He groups the seven cultures into two categories: East and West
(hence the title of his book) by identifying religious and aesthetic complementarities.
"It should be eventually possible," he concludes, "to achieve a society for mankind
generally in which the higher standard of living of the most scientifically advanced a
theoretically guided Western nations is combined with the compassion, the universal
sensitivity to the beautiful, and the abiding equanimity and calm joy of the spirit
which characterizes the sages and many of the humblest people of the Orient." This may
appear to be an excessively optimistic view of civilizational change. Since it was written,
there is evidence of both its validity and its weakness. The critical factor relating
to the Huntington thesis is the inevitability of civilizational change so dramatic as
to raise the possibility not of the clash but rather the accommodation.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, in his comparative analysis of the work of Spengler, Toynbee,
Berdyaev, Northrop and others, finds concordance in their rejection of the linear concept
of civilizational change. In the evolution of civilizations there are oscillating
variations, spiralling and branching development. This is further substantiation of
the permeability of civilizational boundaries, a permeability that has phenomenally
increased in the nearly half century since these works were written. Sorokin also
distinguishes between culture and civilization: "civilizations…have shown a succession
of cultural systems which cannot be described by the same label throughout their history
as 'Greek civilization' or 'Western European civilization' without grave risk of
misunderstanding and error."
Other analysts confirm the difficulties in classifying civilizations and tracking
their mutations. Studying West African societies as an anthropologist Bronislaw
Malinowski notes the circular change in cultures. Norman Daniel, an historian using
Islam as a case, distinguishes between culture and civilization. The latter he describes
as the "achievement of civic skills." Daniel refuses to attempt taxonomy of cultures,
maintaining that there are too many interconnections and that different generations are
different cultures.
In sum, change is directed by the diffusion of norms and institutions and by conditions
of receptivity in the receiving culture. When diffusion is reinforced by colonial rule and
receptivity is enhanced by fragmentation and bewilderment of the receiving culture, the
pace and depth of change are accelerated. This analysis can be applied to the contemporary
civilizations, which Huntington describes. The diffusion of colonialism has been replaced
by the dynamic of the technetronic and now cybertronic prowess of radiating societies.
Recipient cultures have been bewildered by this unprecedented impact. Some, certainly
Islamic cultures, try valiantly to resist such cultural intrusion, by re-asserting
religious roots of the pre-technetronic age. Extremist minority groups sometimes
resort to violence in a desperate attempt to stay the infiltration of norms deemed
abhorrent.
Civilizational change cannot aptly be described by the geological metaphors of fault
lines or plate tectonics. Civilizations are delineated by highly permeable membranes, which
filet norms and institutions circularly. The quality and rate of filtration depend on the
viscosity of the substance being filtered, the force of radiation and the absorptive quality
of receptivity. I have analyzed this process in some detail elsewhere and have illustrated
it with a schematic diagram. The distinction made by Spengler and others between culture
and civilization is critical in understanding this process. Civilization—-structures,
artifacts, institutions, technologies—-are filtered at one rate of speed. The almost
immediate diffusion of television, nuclear power and other technologies are examples of
this. But culture—-the soul, the inward-dwelling, aesthetic quality of a people—-may lag
behind this diffusion. It penetrates the delineating membrane at a different rate of
speed and may encounter different qualities of impedance. This is the theoretical
explanation of the very real problem faced by Muslim societies. Eager to accept technological
innovation, they facilitate its flow through the delineating membrane. But the culture of
a radiating society meets resistance. Often the attempts to impede diffusion of culture
while facilitating technological diffusion are frantic, even comic. Thus French efforts
to keep its language pristine by demonizing "Franglais" and other efforts to control
dress, tonsorial style and other "Western behavior" are impedances to contaminating
influences. Unfortunately, these values (soul, culture) cannot be completely separated
from technology (artifacts, civilization). They may flow through the membrane different
rates or may flow together in mixtures indiscernible to the recipient civilization.
Every institutional and technological item, indeed every behavioral and attitudinal
posture, is encased in a penumbra of epistemological premises from which it cannot be
detached.
There is universal agreement among theorists of civilization that there is no
static civilization. The immmutable law of change applies to societies as a well as
to all units of existence. In our own times such change is especially rapid and dramatic.
The civilization of India is no longer dominated by the Gandhian ethic of ahimsa,
satyagraha, and brahmacharya which give philosophical underpinning to the Indian
independence movement. Within two generations India moved from Gandhian non-violence
to the absorption of Kashmir and Sikkim, wars with Pakistan, a war with China, the
acquisition of nuclear weapons and refusal to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Similarly, Turkey in two generations changed from the Ottoman nominal leadership of the
Muslim world to a secular state under a woman prime minister with an American Ph.D. It
would be difficult to find more spectacular examples of rapid civilizational change.
Nor is the civilization of the United States the same as it was a half century
ago. Gone is the ethic of Puritanism, religious and family values of a generation ago.
The debate, which dominates much of American, and to a lesser extent European, discourse
centers on rapid change (some would way deterioration) of values, which bond a society
together. Muslim societies are horrified by the spectacle of the new Leviathan of culture,
telecommunications, and technotronic imperialism which seems triumphant. Both of these
anxieties are compelling proof of the circularity of civilizational change and the
permeability of cultural boundaries.
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