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CounterPunch
February
28, 2003
Is This a Clash of Civilizations?
By M. SHAHID ALAM
On September 11, 2001, when the nineteen Arab
hijackers from Al-Qaida struck the most visible icons of America's
military and financial power--the Pentagon and the Twin Towers--there
were more than a few pundits who concluded with some satisfaction
that the "clash of civilizations" they had been predicting
had finally arrived.
The concept of a "clash of civilizations"
was first drafted in 1990 by Bernard Lewis, a committed Zionist,
to describe the conflict between political Islam and the West.
"This is no less than a clash of civilization--the perhaps
irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against
our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide
expansion of both." Unable to adapt to modernity and secularism,
Islamic societies had rejected Western values and were now transforming
Islam into a militant movement against the West.
A few years later, in 1993, Samuel Huntington,
elevated the thesis of a clash of civilizations into a universal
historical principle. Civilizations are the largest human aggregates
that command human loyalties; and conflicts between civilizations
account for much of the bloodshed in recorded human history.
The Cold War marked a brief departure from this principle, but
now that this aberrant period was happily over, civilizations
could go back to their old pastime--waging wars against each
other. In this new era, Huntington predicted, the most serious
challenge to the West's hegemony would come from Islam and China.
The Huntington thesis was an instant
success that is not hard to explain. The military establishment
seized it as a suitable replacement for the loss of the Soviet
threat. If Islam and China could be inflated into worthy enemies,
they could save the military budget and NATO. Other substitutes--such
as the drug cartels--were examined but they weren't worthy opponents
of imperial United States. The thesis was manna to the Zionists,
who had been working hard to convert their war against the Palestinians
into an American war against Islam. It gave comfort to right-wing
Christian zealots who see Islam as the chief adversary in their
war to win souls for Christ.
And so when Osama's men struck, it instantly
produced demands for a "civilizational war" against
Islam. Not surprisingly, the Zionist voices were the most insistent
and articulate. Within a few hours of the terrorist strikes,
I had seen every current and former Israeli leader on the major
US networks, not counting less eminent Israeli representatives,
all of whom were urging United States to carry the war against
Islamic terrorists to their home ground--in Iraq, Syria, Iran,
Lebanon, Libya and Pakistan. It was no time to mince words. The
United States and Israel now had the same enemies. They were
fighting the same war.
The call to arms was loud and clear.
Writing on October 29, 2001, in The Weekly Standard, William
Kristol and Robert Kagan, strong supporters of Israel, were predicting
that Afghanistan will only be an "opening battle" in
a long war that will "spread and engulf a number of countries
in conflicts of varying intensity." More ominously, they
declared, this war "is going to resemble the clash of civilizations
everyone had hoped to avoid." Other pro-Israelis were more
direct. Norman Podhoretz, editor of the Commentary, a
leading Zionist monthly, was urging the United States to be ready
to "fight World War IV--the war against militant Islam,"
and to "impose a new political culture on the defeated parties."
There was an air of triumphalism in Zionist pronouncements.
It is a testimony to the power of the
pro-war lobbies that the Bush ad-ministration lost little time
in embracing their plans for a civilizational war against Islam.
After a quick but illusory victory over the ragtag Taliban regime
in Afghanistan, United States moved quickly to convert the campaign
against terrorism--a campaign in which it has received the cooperation
of nearly every Muslim country--into a war against countries
that oppose Israel's hegemony over the Middle East. President
Bush's embrace of Likudnik policies was complete when Ariel Sharon,
admonished by his own Courts for complicity in the massacre of
Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla, was declared to be a "man
of peace."
Is America's intimate embrace of Likudnik
policies, its ongoing war against Afghanistan, its impending
war against Iraq, and projected wars against Iran, Syria and
Pakistan, proof that the clash of civilizations has begun? Hardly.
This only demonstrates the power of the lobbies that have been
planning, predicting and promoting the "clash" against
Islam. They were predicting what they were planning to carry
out in due time. The attacks of September 11, 2001 only advanced
their war plans.
The sharpest refutation of the Huntington
thesis comes from the West itself. A growing chorus of Western
voices now proclaims that the war against Iraq is not their
war. In poll after poll, they have been asserting that this
is not a just war, that Iraq does not pose an imminent or mortal
threat to their security, that United States constitutes a greater
threat to world peace than Iraq or South Korea. They know that
Iraqis are mostly Muslims, but that has not stopped them from
recognizing their common humanity; this has not diminished their
outrage over economic sanctions that have killed half a million
Iraqi children. There are many in the West now who feel that
they have more in common with the oppressed Iraqis than
they do with Bush and Blair, or the warmongers that control and
use them. Perhaps for the first time, the imperialist warlords
have failed to use religion to divide mankind.
The partisans of war claim that Islam is evil, it preaches terror
and hatred, and it must be destroyed before it destroys us. It
is a tribute to the moral clarity of so many in the West that
they are not buying into this Manichean duality that apportions
all virtue to one's own tribe and all evil to one's adversary.
Most remarkably, it is the Christian leaders in the West who
have valiantly rejected this Manichean vision, and who now stand
tall in their opposition to the war against Iraq. They are challenging
the bigotry of Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. Even Bush's
own Methodist Church has declared that the war against Iraq is
"without any justification according to the teachings of
Christ."
If the thesis of an inevitable clash
between the West and Islam still had any semblance of credibility,
it was shredded by the global anti-war rallies of February 15,
2003. It is estimated that some 30 million people joined these
rallies in more than 600 cities across the world. Significantly,
the most massive of these rallies were staged in the capitals,
cities and towns of Western countries. It was Westerners who
took the lead, while braving freezing sub-zero temperatures,
to tell their governments that they did not want this war against
Iraq. These demonstrations were most massive in countries--such
as Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia and United States--whose
governments supported the war.
The war-mongering Bush-Blair team may
still go ahead with the war, disregarding the clear democratic
verdict of their own people. But so massive a rejection of war
cannot be ignored without consequences; and by this I mean not
just consequences for the personal careers of Bush and Blair.
When the voice of the people is so blatantly flouted, it will
undermine the illusion so sedulously cultivated of democratic
societies that pay heed to the will of the people. In one instant,
the charade of democracy, of a free press, of governments following
the will of the people will have been tested and shown to be
hollow.
But I also read a deeper, more hopeful
message in the massive rallies of February 15. In the past, the
great powers have nearly always succeeded in manipulating their
citizenry into supporting their overseas adventures, even when
these have destroyed millions of lives. However, I can sense
the stirrings of a new consciousness amongst the privileged sections
of the world's populations, an awareness that their privilege
contributes to the misery of so many across the world, that our
global apartheid cannot endure without destroying everyone.
It appears that they are beginning to
understand that their privilege places a special burden on them:
that they must act to restrain and rectify the rapacity of their
own governments and corporations. At the least, they are now
demonstrating that they will not permit their governments to
murder in the name of the values that they cherish. Once before,
slavery was abolished when its degradation became morally unacceptable
to a growing number of people in slave-owning countries. Now
for the first time, with the anti-war movement, the people of
privilege are beginning to say that global apartheid is unconscionable.
We cannot doubt that these developments
are causing alarm in the inner sanctums of the war-mongering
parties. Even as world conscience shows signs of evolving towards
a new post-tribal stage, we can be sure that plans are underway
to reverse this. When the dominant cliques in the Core countries
are frustrated in their hegemonic designs, they will not hesitate
to shed their democratic façade. They will redouble their
efforts to sow fear, raise alarm, breed mistrust, incite hatred.
They will seek to curtail liberties in the name of national security.
They will attempt to suppress dissent on the pretext of suppressing
terrorism. Perhaps all this is already underway in United States.
And only the coming days, weeks and months will reveal whether
United States will follow the path of other capitalist democracies
in trouble--and descend into fascism--or the forces of justice
and democracy, true to the highest human ideals, will triumph
over the dark forces that have held ascendancy over the fate
of mankind.
M. Shahid Alam
is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His last
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations was published
by Palgrave (2000). You may contact him at m.alam@neu.edu.
© M. Shahid Alam
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February 22
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