Hunting Down Huntington’s Theory

Egypt recently secured its bid for a seat at the United Nations Human Rights Council, drawing in criticism for its own respect for the most fundamental human rights, particularly on the question of enforced disappearances.

Alongside Saudi Arabia’s reelection, many question the legitimacy the two countries have to represent their respective regions in the protection and promotion of human rights.

Undemocratic, despotic, repressive. Such are the go-two words weaponized by every political commentator following the unravelling of the Middle East.

And they attribute this to various causes; underdevelopment, ethnic conflict and corruption are but a few to be featured in this list.

However, there is a growing trend to root these causes as emerging from something intrinsically wrong with our societies.

Samuel Huntington once wrote a seminal work that has become a staple in every political science student’s coursework.

The Clash of the Civilizations makes the striking claim that the post-Cold War world would be marked by civilizational conflict, aggravated primarily by the Islamic Civilization – an aggregate term he lazily throws around with no respect for its nuances.

It is true that Muslim societies are often plagued with what have been deemed as the most offensive acts towards human dignity.

Just last week, Shiite Muslims began celebrating the religious festival of Ashura, notable for its ritualistic practice of self-flagellation.

Yet this isn’t a question of whether Muslim societies, or any other for that matter, should be allowed to practice what they have come to believe as a religious necessity.

My concern is how we choose to frame this narrative. Instead of contextualizing the situation as it is, it becomes another scene in that same-old, age-old Islamic chronicle of horror and cruelty.

As such, this ‘culture of ugliness’, as some have chosen to call it, has forced many Muslims, including myself, to assume an apologetic position that is just as problematic.

We distance ourselves from the acts of ISIS and other similar terrorist cells by denouncing them and publicly calling their orientations ‘un-Islamic’ or marginal or fringe as if that makes our own standing any better.

We claim that this ‘ugliness’ is unjustly attributed to Islam as a whole, as a consequence of the acts of some Muslims.

But that completely overlooks the moral disengagement that allowed for radical jihadist groups to rise.

Terrorism was not built overnight and human rights abuses did not suddenly occur – our culture let them.

Calling that culture Islamic or Middle Eastern or Arab or any other categorization risks reducing the complex layers of interactions and conflicts that exist within each society for expression.

By associating Islam or the Middle East with violence and savagery, we give terrorists a greater voice to speak for all of us.

Their violence is part and parcel of an integral, internal struggle over who gets to speak for Islam and how.

This is problematic because then, we make the mistake of judging our own societies by standards we assume are not genuine to Islam or the Arab World.

And in doing so, we are in fact sustaining the falsity of Western universals.

Huntington relies on the claim that some values belong to some civilizations.

Western, Judeo-Christian values are at odds with Islamic ones because the former have come to be associated with liberty, democracy and justice whereas the latter are more commonly imagined as decadent, corrupt and depraved.

I’ve come to realize that much of much of what the West have constructed as an image of our culture only reinforces the one they have of themselves.

The Muslim ‘other’ is the exact antithesis of their own aspirations. Perhaps that’s why they feel so satis ed with their own culture. They are democratic because we are not. They are progressive because we are not.

The colonial image of the Orient – harems and temptresses – have much more to do with with their own fantasies than the reality here.

What that does is make the mistake of establishing practices such as the Ashura festivals as authentic expressions of Islamic values.

The West and Islam will collide in conflict. Which Islam? Which culture? Mine are much more complex, Mr. Huntington, than you make it out to be.

When you speak of a civilizational conflict between the West and Islam, you are inventing a version of it that best ts your argument – but it’s not true and it’s not ours.