Blog 12: 'The Clash of Civilizations'

Since we spent Monday working on out group projects, the big discussion of this week was on Samuel Huntington and his theory on 'The Clash of Civilizations'. His theory focused on how different parts of the world could be classified into basic groups based on similarities in culture, religion, etc. Several of the groups that are especially of note include "Western civilization" which includes the U.S., Canada, Western and Central Europe, as well as Australia. He also has the "Orthodox civilization" which includes Russia as well as much of Eastern Europe.  Much of the eastern Asian countries are grouped together into what he calls "the Eastern civilization". Latin American countries as well as South America are grouped together into "Latin American civilization" as well as having Huntington put all middle eastern countries together into the "Muslim Civilization". Much criticism of his work comes from him grouping many of these countries together into groups which can be seen as racist and ignorant of the diversities existent within neighboring countries. He stressed that clashes would occur between these civilizations based simply on their group attributes, especially confrontations between the "Western" and "Muslim" groups.

The main reason he put forth that these two would come into contact is the idea that they're both predominantly religions that emphasize spreading one's faith and recruiting in order to gain more members. Huntington says that both groups are obsessed with colonizing and getting as many members as possible, so eventually they will come into full conflict with each other. While some of Huntington's ideas do have their merits, I firmly believe that he is incorrect in his assertions on Western groups and Muslim groups not being able to co-exist in this world. We're seeing some conflict between these groups now, but I feel that in time these observed differences between the two will subside as the generations go on to the point where people in our society wont automatically associate being a Muslim with being a terrorist or violent.

This is what Huntington's world map looks like based on how he categorized different countries.