Huntington anticipates disputes between Western civilization, and the Islamic and Sinic civilizations. The squabble earlier this year between the United States and China over the downed spy plane, and the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on the United States, have refocused attention on this book. Disagreement with Huntington's thesis as it relates to the post-September 11 world is usually based on the idea that fundamentalist, violently anti-American Muslims are not representative of, or even tied in any way to, Islamic civilization.

Given the timeliness of the issue, it is important to make clear that this is an inaccurate assessment of Islam. The word "Islam," contrary to much media misrepresentation, does not mean "peace;" it means "submission." Islam is an imperialist religion, more so than Christianity and in contrast to Judaism. Reading the sacred texts of Islam confirms this.

The Koran is unequivocal in its language. Sura 5, verse 85 prophesies an inevitable conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims: "Strongest among men in enmity to the Believers [the Muslims] wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans." Sura 9, verse 5 adds, "Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. And seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them, in every stratagem [of war]." The Koran asserts that people must be fought "until they embrace Islam."

Islam also teaches that Muslims must not befriend Jews and Christians. Surat Al-Maidah 5:51 says, "O ye who believe [i.e., Muslims], take not the Jews or the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he among you who turns to them [for friendship] is of them." The Koran commands Muslims to fight Jews and Christians: "Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger [Mohammed] and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth [Islam] among the people of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizyah [a tax paid only by Jews and Christians who do not convert to Islam] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." Surat At-Taubah 9:29.

As Huntington recognizes, Islamic civilization is aggressive, and at present defines itself primarily through its opposition to Western civilization. The spontaneous street celebrations in several Muslim cities after the 9/11 attacks, as well as the constant stream of anti-American rhetoric from the Islamic press and Arab street, prove this point. Huntington's clash of civilization thesis, ironically, seems to enjoy much more support in the Islamic world than it does in the Western world. One must question whether this is the case due to our modern Western affliction: "cultural relativism," which is essentially a reluctance to condemn in others what we would never tolerate in ourselves. In any event, The Clash of Civilizations is a crucial read at the moment, and will probably become ever more relevant as time passes.


simplistic yet sophisticated   February 5, 2000
 161 out of 212 found this review helpful

In late 1996 I had the pleasure of watching Palestenian intellectual Edward Said savagely rip into Huntington and his entire "clash of civilizations" thesis (first posited in a "Foreign Affairs" article). The criticism session was a highly entertaining exercise in scholarly colleague-bashing, because Said (rather blatantly) had the gloves off, and not only trashed Huntington's work but also articulated a scathing critique of the entire beltway, foreign affairs, Washington-insider academic elite (of which Huntington is an eminent member) for its American paternalism, alarmism and triumphalism. While Huntington's thesis is hardly of a triumphalist nature, of course, it is indeed alarmist, painting a world-scale portrait of Western Civilization in decline and under attack on all fronts. But this is not the main flaw of Huntington's detailed and meticulously researched work (in which, it must be admitted, there are few serious flaws). Instead, the biggest criticism that can be made of this book is the overly simplistic (almost childishly so) nature of the "Clash" hypothesis (which Said never tired of caricaturing in mocking tones). Huntington is basically saying that "different" people cannot get along, that they will usually prefer their own "kind", and will probably always be in conflict of one sort or another. Duh. One would like to think that such cynical neo-realism would be confined to computer games such as "civilization" (an immensely entertaining means of wasting an entire evening, by the way) but apparently not. Of course, Huntington's argument is more nuanced and deep than that unjust reduction makes it out to be, but that is, I'm afraid to say, the main thrust of his book. Unfortunately, when seeing Said speak I hadn't yet read Huntington's book, so of course I laughed at the ridiculousness of the Clash thesis as portrayed by Said. Now I have read the book, however, and other than limited alarmism and over-simplification, I can safely say that Huntington's work is an impressively-researched piece of social scientific brilliance. As Huntington himself admits in his introduction, the Clash is of course an over-simplified conceptual model, but then, what conceptual models aren't over-simplified to some degree? Marxism, anyone? Huntington's thesis is parsimonious and intensely provocative, and that is exactly what the field of international relations needs at this time of widespread theoretical poverty.


The West IS declining. Deal with it.   March 21, 2004
 128 out of 161 found this review helpful

Huntington articulates how the economic and demographic decline of Western Civilization relative to several of the world's other major civilizations, especially the Sinic (Chinese) and Islamic, is remaking the so-called world order. Cold War alliances were a passing phenomenon in which inter-civilization alliances temporarily formed to repel a common ideological foe, and U.S. attempts to maintain those alliances against other American foes, e.g., Islamic fundamentalism, are doomed to failure. Western countries, including the U.S., need to accept and deal with the relative independence of formerly subservient nations.

The truly amazing thing about Huntington's thesis and examples is that he published it eight years ago, based on data and events through 1995. He almost perfectly profiles (if PC types will forgive me the term) the backgrounds of the 9-11 terrorists and their cohorts. And he describes how East Asian states will turn away from the U.S. and toward China as the Chinese recover their three thousand year old traditional hegemony over the region. He also predicts that Russia, the core state of Orthodox civilization, will, after flirting with Westernization, return to attempting to establish its own traditional hegemony over Orthodox allies and neighboring states.

Huntington points out that it was European population explosion, as well as technological superiority, that propelled Western Civilization to colonize other continents (North America and Australia) and dominate virtually all other civilizations. Now the tide has turned as relative population growth drives non-Western immigrants to Europe, North America and Australia. The spread of Western, especially U.S. commercialism, should not be equated, as many American elites naively assume, with acceptance of liberal Western political and social norms. Huntington points out that just the opposite is occurring. As non-Western civilizations prosper from adoption of Western technology they create wealth and independence that allows them to celebrate and assert THEIR traditional values.

A particularly interesting point Huntington makes is how U.S. and Western obsession with containing other civilizations' nuclear weapons is failing. Countries seeking such weapons do so not with the intent of necessarily using them on neighbors but having them to prevent military domination by the U.S. Huntington reminds us that during the Cold War the U.S-lead West insisted it needed to maintain tactical nuclear weapons to offset the perceived conventional force superiority of the USSR-lead Warsaw Pact nations. Now that the U.S. has demonstrated dominant conventional military power that nobody else can hope to match, everyone thinks they need nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed allies to protect their independence. Huntington points out that South Koreans seems a lot less concerned with North Korean nuclear arms than Americans or Japanese are.

Finally, this book makes one think that the so-called War on Terrorism is somewhat misguided. The tactic is terror but the real conflict is inter-civilizational rivalry. An interesting schematic on page 245 illustrates Huntington predictions of emerging civilizational alignments. For example, the West will align more closely with Latin American and African civilizations and to some extent with the Orthodox (Russia). He postulates that Islam will be in greater conflict with virtually ALL other civilizations with which it has regular contact EXCEPT Sinic (China plus the other East Asian countries excluding Japan). And it's happening. The UN structure created by the U.S. and Western Europe at the end of WWII IS a forum for containing and frustrating U.S. and Western interests. And let's face the truth. A senior Canadian politician's recent characterization of his country's embrace of homosexual marriage and legalization of marijuana as "wellsprings of national pride" provides ample evidence that Western civilization IS in decline. Start studying Mandarin...

The book is illustrated with some useful generalized maps and numerous statistical charts to support Huntington's thesis. HIGHLY recommended to anyone trying to figure out what's happening in the world and why "winning the war on terrorism" (whatever that means) will not solve all problems.


Too big a chunk of reality?   April 7, 2001
 86 out of 101 found this review helpful

I remember noticing the essay on which this book was based, in an international newspaper several years ago. Though I knew nothing of the author at the time, I don't think it took me more than a paragraph or two to realize, first, "This is a major argument," second, "It has some validity," and third, "This is going to make a lot of people mad." The book is, of course, far more nuanced and detailed than the article. I do not agree with every point Professor Huntington makes, but it certainly carries through on the promise of those first few paragraphs. This book is one strong and rather iconoclastic model by which to understand international relations in the coming years. Even if you disagree with it, or find it offensive, this is definitely a book worth reading, or if you're a teaching, assigning your students to read and attack or defend.

I do not think some attacks below (not all really arguments) on Huntington's approach to Islam were quite fair. I didn't see anything "pathological" or "paranoid" about his arguments, and he explicitly stated, time and time again, that Islam was not at all "monolithic." Actually, I think he is sometimes overly cautious and understated on the subject, in effect making all kinds of excuses for the militant character of Islam, and holding out the hope that it will mellow. Anyone who knows how Islam is perceived by non-Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, India, or China, or is aware of the military career of Mohammed, can only be amazed how prevalent p.c. attempts to deny the obvious seem to be. (A phenomena we have seen with other absolutist idealogies.) Instead of trying to browbeat anyone who tells the truth about Islamic militarism and lack of freedom, why don't Muslim intellectuals change the realities? (If they can.)

It is true, Huntington did not clearly define what he meant by "civilization." It seems odd to designate countries that have been taught atheism for eighty years, "Orthodox," for example. But I think the basic categories are sound, however we quibble about semantics. I see the relationship between China and the West as more ambivalent, though, in other words more potentially positive, than Huntington. (I wrote a book, True Son of Heaven, which describes common links between Chinese and Christian thought.) While Huntington discusses other variables, one of the main assumptions of this book is that powers clash. He generally seems to avoid dogmatism on the nature or intensity of the clash. So I agree that some tension in the relationships he describes is fairly inevitable, though I by no means ascribe to Real Politic or any deterministic or cynical view of human relations.

Agree or disagree, Huntington's is a thesis that deserves careful consideration. It contains some hard truths, but as the Preacher said, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy."

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man / d.marshall@sun.ac.jp


Paradigm shift, or a lot of hot air?   July 13, 2001
 51 out of 86 found this review helpful

Huntington made a sincere attempt to be at the cutting edge in defining the shape of international politics in the wake of the cold war, and perhaps hoped to create a self-fulfilling prophesy. But the world's just not that simple. Despite this book's length, and the amount of effort Huntington invested in arguing his "clash of civilizations" thesis here and in the pages of Foreign Affairs, it is nonetheless based on a number of generalizations and conclusions that do not stand up to more detailed scrutiny. For example, the renewed tensions between the U.S. and Russia probably have less to do with Russia's "Orthodox Slav" civilizational sphere than the more recent history of hostility between the former USSR and the West, as well as the fact that many Russians today feel international financial institutions (propped up by US, EU or Japanese capital) plundered the Russian economy. His characterization of the Yugoslav wars as a conflict on a civilizational "faultline" is almost laughable (even though it was quite popular for a time among those former Yugoslavs located on the 'right' side, i.e. in the West, of Huntington's civilization border). Additionally, although Huntington attempts to downplay it, the underlying theme of "Clash of Civilizations" seems to be that the West (read America) is better than the rest. Therefore, the book often seems more like a call to arms than a constructive analysis of potential international political problems and how to overcome them.