‘Clash of civilizations’ view too simplistic, expert says

Posted: 3/02/07

‘Clash of civilizations’ view
too simplistic, expert says

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

AUSTIN (ABP)—The “clash of civilizations” view of Muslim and Christian conflict only prolongs problems and encourages dangerous forms of fundamentalism, a prominent scholar told participants at the Ethics Without Borders conference.

Charles Kimball, who has visited the Middle East 40 times and worked closely with Congress, the White House and the State Department, spoke at the event, organized by the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission.

A professor of religion at Wake Forest University, Kimball called the clash of civilizations framework “an extremely unhelpful one” for people in the United States, most of whom know very little about Islam.

“I think it’s important to see in this kind of us-versus-them mentality the very deep Islamic bias that’s at work,” Kimball said.

“They advance a simplistic image that Islam is anti-Western, anti-us. The premise here is that Islam never modernized, never separated between church and state. That Islam is somehow incapable of differentiating between civilizations. That is simply untrue.”

The term “clash of civilizations” was first popularized in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article by Samuel Huntington. In the essay, Huntington said world politics is entering a new phase in which the fundamental source of conflict will be cultural, not ideological or economic.

“Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations,” Huntington wrote. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Islam was “the brilliant civilization that led the world” through much of history, Kimball said. Historians have said Western civilization was influenced by the Arab world and Islam in areas of philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture and the university system.

Muslim scholars led the way in academic and scientific fronts well before their Western counterparts caught up, so to neatly divide the modern conflict into a clash of two different civilizations is much too simplistic, Kimball cautioned.

“This is not an anti-intellectual tradition,” he said. “It’s one that has been historically flexible and open. There are so many ways that we are interconnected historically with Islam that throws this premise on its ear.”

There are 10 times as many Muslims in Indonesia as Southern Baptists in the whole world and twice as many Muslims in China as Southern Baptists in the whole world, Kimbell noted. What’s more, the United States is home to more Muslim Americans than to Presbyterians or Episcopalians.

Christianity and Islam are the two largest religious traditions in the world, encompassing more than 45 percent of the world’s population. Indonesia has the most Muslims of any country.

Mohamed Elibiary, president of the Dallas-based Freedom and Justice Foundation, said in a response to Kimball’s presentation that while Islam is a varied religion, most American Muslims felt the same in the days and months after 9/11.

It was an “educational” time for them, he said, because it helped Muslim Americans “get to know our neighbors a little bit better.”

“The Jerry Falwells of the world, yeah, they ticked us off quite a bit,” Elibiary said. “All of us wanted to stand up to the bully. And we felt we were bullied. This isn’t much different than much of us feel around the world.”

And while not all Muslims agree on all aspects of Islamic theology, most have a general consensus on how to interpret holy scriptures and the teachings of the prophets, he said.

Those beliefs have traveled a long and difficult road with Christianity through the centuries, Kimball said. Like Christianity, Islam is a revolutionary monotheism.

Both religions “are talking about the same God,” he said. “There is really not much ambiguity about this. ‘Allah’ is simply the Arabic word for God.

“There is no God but God. That’s the fundamental beginning point” of Islam, Kimball said. “The name for God in Islam, in Arabic, is ‘Allah.’ This is not another god. This is the God. It’s the same God that Jews and Christians are talking about.”

Muslims and Christians simply understand God differently, Kimball said. He compared it to the way Christians often disagree even within their own denominations about certain beliefs.

Both Elibiary and Kimball stressed that at the center of the struggle to overcome a simplified view of Islam is a lack of education. That lack reinforces the depth of ignorance that feeds upon and builds “all kinds of fear in our country,” Kimball said. “Decision-makers don’t know the first thing about what they pontificate on television.”

Iran should not be confused with Afghanistan, and Lebanon should not be confused with Libya, any more than Greece with Great Britain or Sweden with Switzerland, he said.

“The importance here for us in terms of education is the willingness …,” he said. “We have to be willing to work much harder in what I call the dense thicket of particulars and quit talking in these generic terms.”

Elibiary agreed. “The fear of every minority is the majority being in hysteria,” he said.