ABSTRACT
The point of departure in this chapter is Niall Ferguson’s 2006 claim that ‘as works of prophecy go’ S.P. Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis has been ‘a real winner.’ This claim is examined in the light both of the persistent scholarly verdict that the thesis is deeply flawed, and its continued public and academic usage since it first appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. Given that the thesis is deemed to misrepresent, rather than capture, the tensions existing between Islam and the West now and into the future, why has it persisted as long as it has?
The burden of Huntington’s thesis is that future wars will be conducted by entire civilizations – though principally Islam and the West – and be driven largely by cultural differences at the fault-lines of contact between them. Huntington had proposed this as a model of international relations to replace the old Cold War paradigm that had ended with the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of Communism. His aim was to construct an equally simple model of global politics that could predict and explain the kind of conflict that would come to dominate international relations.
While Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ was denied paradigmatic status, this chapter considers aspects of his futurological model that he may have got right or partially right. This includes the key concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’, which he is credited with introducing to the study of international relations, and the ‘helpfulness’ of his thesis in accounting for the rise of populist far-right parties, particularly in Europe, and their growing electoral success. The early warning that Huntington provided of civilizational alienation between Muslims and Hindus on the subcontinent and the BJP’s agenda of turning India into a Hindu state is also looked at in the context of a regional case study of a civilizational ‘clash’ ostensibly well underway.
That Huntington’s thesis may also have derived a degree of reinforcement from the phenomenon of Islamist radicalization on the one hand, and the rise of Islamophobia on the other, is also explored. Reinforcement also comes in the form of Islamist narratives that conjure up an apocalyptic confrontation between Islam and the West, narratives that are constructed independently of Huntington’s, but in terms of doomsday scenarios run parallel with his.
The chapter ends by reflecting on the place where the ‘clash of civilizations’ has arrived, and currently occupies in the study of international relations.
