ABSTRACT
In his 1993 article entitled ‘Clash of Civilizations?’ published in Foreign
Affairs and subsequently lengthened into a book with a similar title (1996),
Samuel Huntington argued that at the end of the Cold War, the ‘great
divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be
cultural’ rather than ideological or economic (1993: 22). He maintained that
a new era of world politics would involve Islamic and Confucian civilisa-
tions becoming a threat to Western values, and Islamic and Western civili-
sations in particular would clash. This idea subsequently shaped US government anti-Islamic rhetoric and policy in the months following the
September 11 terrorist attacks, thus inflaming passions and encouraging the
conflict of which it foretold.
