The Clash of Islam with the West? Author: Kristyn Elizabeth Kelly Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/660 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2004 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. BOSTON COLLEGE THE CLASH OF ISLAM WITH THE WEST ? A S ENIOR HONORS THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROGRAM AND THE ARTS AND SCIENCES HONORS PROGRAM BY KRISTYN E. K ELLY APRIL 30, 2004 Dedicated to St ephen P. Driscoll and all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 2 “We read because we want to know about others and we want to know about ourselves.” –Azar Nafisi author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Me moir in Books 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 8 Chapter 1: A Discussion of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” 11 Islam’s Bloody Borders 14 “Kin -Country Syndrome” 16 The W est and The Rest 17 The Islamic -Confucian Connection 18 Conclusions 19 Chapter 2: Responses to Samuel Huntington 21 Misinterpretation of Bosnia 21 Misinterpretation of the Gulf War 23 Misinterpretation of the Arms Trade 24 Underestimation of the Role of the Middle Class 26 Overestimation of the Cohesiveness of Cultures 27 Conclusions 30 Chapter 3: My Theory 35 Islam with Christianity and Judaism 36 Sunni v. Shia 37 Summary 38 The Generational Split 39 The Muslim World 39 The United States 42 US Foreign Policy 43 George W. Bush v. Bill Clinton 44 Palestine 46 The Western Media 47 Conclusions 48 Chapter 4: Algeria 51 History 51 The Benjedid Years 51 The HCE Years 57 Summary 61 The Islamist Movement 62 Alternate Groups 65 MIA 65 GIA 66 AIS 67 Summary 67 Islamist Relations with Foreign N ations 68 Arab States 68 The West 69 Conclusions 71 Map and Tables 74 Map 1 74 Table 1 75 Table 2 76 Table 3 77 Table 4 77 Table 5 78 Table 6 78 Table 7 79 4 Chapter 5: Indonesia 80 Democracy in Indonesia 81 Muslims in Indonesia 84 Summary 88 Extremist Muslims 89 Laskar Jihad 89 Jemaah Islamyiah 92 Islamic Defenders Front 92 Summary 93 Conclusions 94 Map and Table 95 Map 2 95 Table 8 96 Chapter 6: Lebanon 97 Civil War 97 Aftermath of the Civil War 99 The Origins of Hizbullah 99 The Creation of Amal 100 The Creation o f Hizbullah 101 Summary 105 The Lebanese Government and Hizbullah 106 Hizbullah and Foreign Nations 108 Israel 108 Palestine 109 Iran 110 Syria 110 The West 114 Hizbullah Terrorism? 116 Conclusions 117 Map and Tables 119 Map 3 119 Table 9 120 Table 10 120 Table 11 121 Chapter 7: Final Thoughts 122 Bibliography 131 Notes 135 5 Acknowledgement s I would like to take this opportunity to thank a few individuals who have helped me through this process. First and foremost I would like to thank my advisor Professor Paul Christensen. The idea for this paper came from material I read in his Compara tive Social Movements course. Without his patience and guidance throughout my writing I would have been completely lost. I would also like to thank Professor Paul Gray who provided me with direction and motivation during his International Studies Seminar last fall. Thank you to all of my professors throughout my BC career who have helped me develop both intellectually and as a person. Because of their support I was able to have the confidence to tackle such an undertaking. Professor Robert Murphy, Prof essor David Deese, and Linda Mackay, thank you for dedicating yourselves to the International Studies Program. It truly is a worthwhile major and we all have benefited from your hard work. To my friends, thank you for dealing with the stress, the break downs, the running up and down the stairs desperately searching for something, and the “Kristy Kelly Memorial Library” that essentially took over the kitchen table and the first floor! I appreciate your listening to me complain, your encouragement that I could “do it”, and your quietly asked, “How’s it going?” when you knew I could use someone to talk to. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my family. You have always believed in me and supported me no matter what. It was with your support that I got into Boston College and it is with your support that I am graduating with honors. We have truly come full circle Mom! Thank you for taking the hysterical phone calls as I tried to figure out how I could get home for peace and quiet, or just figured out how I could 6 finish. Thank you for sending me the numerous newspaper and magazine articles. They showed me that you were always thinking of me, and wanted to be just as involved in the project as I was. Thank you for simply being the best! 7 Introduction On September 11, 2001, we suffered a horrible tragedy. I myself lost a close family friend, a New York City Police Officer who lost his life saving the lives of others. As I struggled to make sense of what wa s going on around me I was struck by the amount of hatred and ignorance I saw Americans express towards those of Islamic origins. I decided to set out in search of reasons for how people could feel such powerful hatred towards Americans that they would se ek to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. As Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Mohammed said, “You are the enemy of that which you do not know.” Some of the questions that I began pondering were questions over the differences between America n and Islamic culture. Is there simply an inevitable gap between these cultures, which can only lead to catastrophe? What is the appeal of fundamentalist Islam to people of my generation? What is the appeal of fundamentalism in general? It is these questions that I hope to answer in this paper. I would also like to examine the globalization of culture. Globalization has come to be synonymous with Westernization and more importantly Americanization. Along with American exports come American music, mo vies, television shows, and pop culture in general. The question is whether this exportation of American culture is leading to a worldwide global convergence of culture or whether it is leading nations to rebel against it. One can argue that the more and more prosperity a nation gains the more and more likely it will be to follow the American cultural example. American culture is synonymous with success to many nations and thus it is easy to see how different countries would hope to emulate this culture. However, along with cultural acceptance, 8 the world is seeing a rise in protectionist measures and ethnic conflicts. There has been an increase in what is called “retribalization”, the retraditionalization of a people. People who were once considered “m odern” rediscover their local roots. It is very difficult for people living in modern societies to imagine why a people would push for this move, but it is happening more and more often in the world. In the course of writing this thesis paper I will mak e a concerted effort to look at the issue as objectively as I can because I believe that cultural ethnocentrism is one of the leading factors in creating this conflict of beliefs. For the purposes of the paper I will be borrowing Amin Saikal’s definitions of “the West” and “Islam”. The West “refers to those North American, West European and Australian democracies that have evolved and functioned as a somewhat coherent political and military alliance, under US leadership since the Second World War (espec ially when faced by a common threat), despite differences arising from identity, cultural, social and political diversity within the alliance that have often led to divergent foreign policy interest and approaches.” Islam “refers to all Arab and non-Ar ab followers of the religion of Islam, whether living in countries where Islam is the dominant religion or residing as minorities elsewhere. It signifies a common broad religious affiliation, without denying the existence among Muslims of multiple interpretations of Islam and national political differences, which since Islam’s early centuries have rarely allowed Muslims to act in a unified fashion on the world stage. Nor does it imply the absence of rivalries and conflicts, which have often marred relatio ns among Muslim states in modern times.”1 I begin first by expounding the ideas of Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington is a leading theorist on the issues facing Islam and the West in the new world order. He was the first to coin the phrase “the clash of civilizations”. In my next chapter I will discuss the principal criticisms of Huntington’s work drawing on the work of authors living in the 9 West as well as in the world of Islam. I conclude the theoretical section in Chapter 3 by presenting my own idea s on the relationship between Islam and the West, hoping to prove that there is not necessarily an inevitable clash between the two. In the second half of the paper I will apply my theoretical research to case studies of Algeria, Indonesia and Lebanon looking at these countries in order to see if there is a clash between Islam and the West in three different parts of the world. 10 Chapter 1: A Discussion of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” Samuel Huntington claims, “It i s my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic.