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October 2002 IPRI Journal 1 C ONTENTS Volume VI Summer 2006 Number 2 Articles 1. Has A Clash of Civilisations Begun?: From the Cold War of Ideology to a 1 Hot War of Religion Dr Ali A. Mazrui 2. Nuclear Iran: Regional Implications 15 Dr Maqsudul Hasan Nuri 3. Pakistan’s Economic Relations with the Middle East 36 Dr Ahmad Rashid Malik 4. Balochistan Disturbances: Causes and Response 56 Dr Noor ul Haq 5. Conceptualising Islamic Strategy for Environment and Sustainable 74 Development Dr Muhammad Ahsan 6. Globalisation: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Countries 89 Nuzhat Khanum 7. Ethnicisation of Power Struggle in the Post Soviet Afghanistan 106 Dr Razia Sultana IPRI Journal 1 HAS A CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS BEGUN?: FROM THE COLD WAR OF IDEOLOGY TO A HOT WAR OF RELIGION Dr Ali A. Mazrui * Introduction hen Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington first published his article “A Clash of Civilisations” in the American journal W Foreign Affairs in 1993, the idea sounded remote to many people. Muslims espe cially did not like Huntington’s thesis that a confrontation was on the horizon between the West and Islam. Nevertheless, after September 11, 2001, it is no longer inconceivable that we are heading for escalating tensions between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and much of the Muslim world, on the other. The Cold War between the Soviet Bloc and NATO was a contest of ideology within the same European civilisation and its offshoots. Both American liberal capitalism and Russian Communism were born out of European culture. There is now a danger of a hot war of religion to succeed the old Cold War of Ideology. People of good will should try and prevent the new trend between America and its allies, on the one hand, and Muslim countries such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia, on the other. The Western world as a whole has previously clashed with other civilisations long before the Cold War of Ideology. There was genocide against the native ancient civilisations of the Americas. There was later enslavement of millions of Africans for use in the so-called New World.1 Thirdly, there was the phase of European imperialism and colonization of most of the world. The question, which arises, is whether the fourth phase is that of the United States as an imperial superpower. Is America now a new form of empire, controlling millions of people through a variety of inducements and intimidations? For Kuwait, the United States extends the carrot of security * Dr Ali A. Mazrui is Director at the Institute of Global Cultural Studies & Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA. This article is a part of writer’s forthcoming book entitled Islam Between Globalization and Counterterrorism (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2006), Chapter 5, pp. 69-80. 1 According to Sanford J. Ungar: ‘Over the centuries, somewhere between ten and thirty million African people were sold into slavery. One estimate is that more than two million of them were imported into the British colonies in the West Indies and North America between 1680 and 1786,” Sanford J. Ungar, Africa: The People and Politics of an Emerging Continent. Third Revised Edition. (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc. 3rd Revised Edition, 1989), p.38. 2 IPRI Journal against Saddam Hussein’s aggression. For Egypt, the United States extends a billion dollars a year to keep Egypt out of any military coalition against Israel.2 For Saddam Hussein the United States wields the stick of military power. For most of the world, the United States declares a doctrine of perpetual American supremacy. Never in history has any nation been so far ahead of its nearest rival in economic, military, technological and political power. For better or worse, the United States is truly without a peer – the first among unequals.3 Let us now take a closer look at these four stages of clash of civilisations and their finale. From Genocide to Globalisation Has Huntington been vindicated by the events of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing George W. Bush’s war on terrorism? Are we witnessing a clash of civilisations unfolding – especially between the world of Islam and the Western world? Huntington argues that now that the Cold War had ended, future conflicts in world politics would be less and less between States or ideological blocs and more and more between civilizations or coalitions of cultures. The article caused an intellectual explosion at the time. It was debated from New York to Kuala Lumpur and from Cape Town to Stockholm. Since Huntington argued that the most likely civilisational conflict was between the West and Islam, his article was even debated close to Mecca and Medina, with Huntington in attendance. Two years later Huntington completed a whole book on the subject and published it. Most Muslim and Third World critics of Huntington argued that he got it all wrong. We were not headed for a clash of civilisations. Some 2 For fiscal year 2001, the United States Government provided Egypt with $1.3 billion of foreign military financing and $695 million of economic support fund. See Operations Appropriations for FY 2001’, Arms Sales Monitor. No. 44 (November 2000). 3 Of the $43.6 trillion Gross World Product (GWP) in 2000, the US accounted for 23%, 20% for the EU, 10% for China, and 7% for Japan. See CIA World Fact book 2001. ‘The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $36,300. … leading industrial power in the world, highly diversified and technologically advanced; petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, mining’. For fiscal year 1999, the United States Government’s military expenditures were estimated at $276.7 billion, representing 3.2% of the nation’s gross domestic product during that year. See CIA World Fact book 2002. Moreover, in a Summer 1999 article, comparing the militaries of United States and China, Bates Gill and Michael O’Hanlon write that: “The United States owns “capital stock” of modern military equipment valued at close to $1 trillion; China’s corresponding figure is well under $100 billion’. See Bates Gill and Michael O’ Hanlon, ‘China’s Hollow Military’, The National Interest, No. 56 (Summer 1999). IPRI Journal 3 insisted that the primacy of the State as the final international actor was not in doubt. The question arises whether the significance of September 11, 2001, the attacks on the United States, the devastation of Afghanistan, the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian homeland, the plans to invade Iraq and Somalia, and American troops fighting Muslim militants in the Philippines and former Soviet Georgia, all add up to an unfolding conflict between the United States and its closest allies (Israel and Britain especially) on the one hand, and more and more Muslim countries, on the other. The worst mistake, which Huntington made, was not conceptual [such as the meaning of “civilisation”] or “factual” [whether the role of “the State” would decline]. The central error he made was temporal, the assumption that clashes of civilisations were part of the future, rather than inseparable from the past and the present of the human condition. There have been clashes of civilisations between the West and other societies and cultures for at least four hundred years. The stages of these conflicts include the following: The Genocidal Phase of Clash of Civilisation These were the early years of the European migration and settlement of the Americas. Europeans clashed with civilisations like those of the Incas and Mayas and effectively destroyed or weakened them. Was there a ‘world opinion’ in that era? Clashes of civilisations are partly about influencing perceptions and constructing stereotypes. In those days, the mass media consisted of the pulpit and church congregations. Distances were long and the time-span of travel immense. The genocides received little criticism from the media of the day. The Enslaving phase of Clash of Civilisations Millions of Africans were exported to North, South and Central America and to the Caribbean. Again, there was no such thing as ‘world opinion’. The print media was not relevant during the height of enslavement, but it became important during the abolitionist movement. The victims had next to no access to international opinion-formation. The Imperial Phase of Clash of Civilisations The West colonized or semi-colonized more than three quarters of the globe. Westerners settled in some parts of the world, governed in others, and controlled wherever they could. The Hegemonic Globalisation Phase This is the new phase of America as Empire with worldwide power, the Gulliver of the Globe: 4 IPRI Journal (a) Economic Globalization under American dominion.4 (b) Information globalization under American influence: The Internet, the computer, and the information superhighway.5 (c) Comprehensive globalization as the villagisation of the world. (d) One superpower as a security system for the globe. (e) The first among unequals: The United States is so far ahead of its nearest military rival, Russia; it’s nearest economic rival, Japan; it’s nearest technological rival, Germany; it’s nearest linguistic rival, France. The Sins of the Press in this Era of Hegemonic Globalisation But clashes of civilisations are also wars of images and the control of opinion. In this hegemonic phase, the media are subject to sins. Contrasting Images of Islam NEGATIVE POSITIVE • Oppressed women • Female Heads of State • High Political violence • Low street crime • International terrorism • National terrorism in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Basque Spain, Northern Ireland I. Sins of Commission a) Distortions of stories – such as the American smart weapons during the Gulf War of 1990s.
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