Chapter II
CLASH OF CIVILIZATION OR CLASH OF INTERESTS?

WESTERN CIVILIZATION
There is a tendency in the West to consider its own tradition alone as rational and scientific and denigrate other traditions as mere propaganda, religious obscurantism or superstition. Cultural development is often measured by comparison with Western culture. Consequently, modernity is not considered a characteristic of Islamic societies. Instead, it is seen as an integral part of a universal process of becoming civilized. According to this scheme, the West is progressive, rational, enlightened and secular. Islam is backward, fanatical, irrational and fundamentalist. What is interesting is that it is not Islam and Christianity that are contrasted, or the West and the East, but Islam and the West, a religion and a geographical area. Even in the Age of Enlightenment the European attitude to Islam remained unenlightened. In the writings of illustrious European poets and playwrights - from Dante and Shakespeare to Byron and Shelly - there were pejorative refer ences to the Quran and the Prophet, to Moors and Saracens. They became part of the regular intellectual diet of many a European student right down to the present. Voltaire himself wrote a play entitled Fanaticism, or the Prophet Mohammed.

As Jochen Hipplier has said: By caricaturing different cultures, by arbitrarily and willfully misrepresenting Islamic societies we grant ourselves absolution. Others are fanatical, we are not. Other are irrational, we are not.1 Furthermore, it is clearly very important for us in the West to feel superior and to see Western culture as the 'best' and 'most progressive.'2

The term civilization is usually used in the singular to mean Western civilization which since the eighteenth century has been in the West as the civilization that has set about to destroy and obliterate systematically all other civilizations including the Islamic. It is being done in the name of a world order which is completely based on the Judeo-Christian-based Western ethos. The view which the Christian and the post-Christian West, in the colonial era, have of themselves as being endowed with a universal mission of redemption, is in many respects the same. Whereas it was earlier deemed necessary to 'win the world for Christ,' now 'modernization' - that is, adherence to the model of the West - is exported and preached with almost evangelical fervor as a sure means of redemption. 

However, the concept of Western modernization is highly political. As Reinhard Schulze asserts convincingly, it allows all attributes of modernity to be defined as European, and Europe or the West to be described as the creator of modernity. The non-European, particularly the Islamic, world is simply cast in the role of the sufferer who was infected by the West's modernity, and can now no longer come to terms with it.3 ....This conviction is also represented in the new western literature of Islamic studies and the social sciences.4

It goes without saying that many people in the West no longer feel c onnected to Christianity as a religion, but rather as a cultural influence. Their culture is directly or indirectly shaped by it and they do not feel there is anything unusual in this. But, Islam is hardly ever seen as a cultural category, but as a religion, one which is threatening.5 The West concentrates on Islam as a religion which is made out to be responsible for countless political, cultural and social phenomena in Islamic countries. And it is clearly Islam as a religion that generates such fear in Western culture, a fear of religion that the West thought it had banished from its enlightened societies. To quote Reinhard Schulze:

"The West appears to re-enact, indeed to prove its own Enlightenment and its own independence from the power of religion by comparison with the Orient. This is surely also because doubts have arisen about the victory of the world over religion, or of reason over irrationality in the West itself."6

Hippler got to the heart of the matter when he said: the perception of the Islamic threat has virtually nothing to do with the Middle East or Islam, but everything to do with the establishment of an inter-Western identity. It is about reassuring ourselves, about reassuring each other of how rational, enlightened and sensible we Westerners are. The need for this has of course arisen from the regrettable fact that standards of civilization in Europe are not high, and are constantly being dragged down by explosive set-backs. Fascism, Stalinism and other archaic phenomena such as the wars in Balkans, the civil war in Northern Ireland, or racism in the USA which exceeds even what is prevalent in Europe - to mention but a few examples -- should urge us to be careful in our estimation of Western
civilization.7

WEST'S SELF INTEREST
Over the past two centuries the Islamic world has come to be penetrated and shaped by the West, and much more so than ever the West was affected by influences from its neighbour. Western power has dictated th e boundaries of Muslim countries and fashioned the modern states. Western power, too, has integrated Muslim economies into the new western-dominated world economy.

The Western policies towards the Islamic world are primarily determined by the analysis of economic and power interests, not by the evaluation of a religion. These policies are single-mindedly pursued by Western self-interest, at times brutally, with little regard for the lives of people there. It is a question of power politics, of control. The problem is the growing military power of many states in the so-called Third World, who could escape Western dominance. The problem is that a widening circle of states reserve the right to use their power as they fit. This is a dreadful nightmare for the West. The countries in question should, hence, behave in a manner that the Western countries 'see fit' and not as they themselves 'see fit.' Therefore, if any country's policies are found contrary to the Western interest, it is dubbed as against the i nternational law and world peace.

WESTERN DOMINATION
The existing world order, in which the West has retained its privileged economic position despite the end of the colonial system that contributed to its prosperity, perpetuates the inequalities and protects the vested interests derived from that system. The international system functions now on a single criterion -- the interests of the great powers. All else is irrelevant, and will remain so unless the premises of unipolar absolutism are challenged by those countries whose interests and sovereignty are most at stake.

The realpolitik of the rich and successful states in the West necessarily involves manipulation of the 160 or more Third World states (which include all the Muslim countries) in order to keep them divided. It is actually a function of their power that has necessarily to work for obtaining commercial and economic advantages in the international marketplace. The precise mechanism of international trade a nd economic relationships are certainly characterized by the exploitation by the rich of the many poor through two simple mechanisms: terms of trade and keeping the many poor nations at one another's throat. This is why the poor states cannot take any united action. Terms of trade mean that the poor commodity producers have to sell cheap and are forced to buy dearer industrial products, including technology. It has to be conceded that such economic exploitation is an integral and unavoidable part of the system. According to Robert Keohane, the author of After Hegemony, "The theory of hegemony, as applied to the world political economy, defines hegemony as preponderance of material resources. Four sets of resources are especially important. Hegemonic powers must have control over raw materials, control over sources of capital, control over markets, and competitive advantages in the production of highly valued goods."8

According to German economist, Andre Gunder Frank, the development of the i ndustrialized countries from the fifteenth century was a direct result of their economic, and later political, dominance of today's underdeveloped countries, a huge majority of which were colonies. The process sucked them into a long-term structurally disadvantageous relationship which resulted in the development of some countries and the current underdevelopment of Latin America and by extension other Third World regions. This is the foundation of Frank's argument: that the development of the industrialized states was only made possible (and continues to be) by the underdevelopment of the Third World.9

It is obvious from complicated web of open diplomacy, and the covert moves being planned and executed by the powers of the day, that the West would like the Islamic world to remain weak, disunited and incapable of achieving its dues status as well as its share of the world's resources. According to Dr. Haider Mehdi, "the West wants to grab all the benefits of all the resources of the word, to attai n the highest living standard for its own peoples, and impose its political will and cultural dominance, at whatever cost to the rest of humanity."10 The west only acts in its self-interest, or what it sees as its interest, irrespective of country or creed. The capitalists of the West are afraid of the rapid development of the Third World. This would mean that they would lose their money, their affluent lifestyle and their way of life. These are the permanent interests of the West and it is threat to them that they oppose through every means moral, amoral or downright immoral. The west is selfish and ruthless in its interests. Some western experts, like Kelly in Arabia, the Gulf and the West (1980), demanded outright invasion of Muslim countries, like those in the Gulf, in order to capture their wealth, their oil wells and ports, to make them safe for the West.

The Islamic states are part of the so-called Third World that is dominated by the West. The Western dominance is of a multi-dimensional n ature, not just military or political hegemony. Economic and intellectual forces are also important components of the dominant power that the West wields. The dominant country or countries of the West have not only penetrated the Third World, particularly, the Islamic or Arab countries in economic and political terms but also in very significant cultural areas.

The dominant Western systems were created to enforce the rules of an international economic order the main purpose of which was to promote the interests of the respective dominant power. The international economic system is heavily tilted in favor of the industrialized West. This imposes severe restraints on the modernization and development processes in the developing countries. In economic terms, growth and modernization are key concerns of the so-called liberal philosophy. But it is more concerned with increasing the size of the cake than distributing it fairly and equitably.

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?
The concept of a clash of civilizations, suggested by the Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, is based on the notion of the Western domination of the world. In an article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" Huntington predicts that future world politics will be determined by conflicts between different civilizations/cultures. He envisaged that future competition and conflict would be based not on national perceptions and goals but on larger cultural groupings "civilizations", of which he identified eight civilizations: the Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African. He took note of the fact that the failure of western ideas of nationalism and socialism had produced a return to the roots phenomenon among non-western civilizations, such as Asianisation in Japan, Hinduisation in India, "re-Islamization" in the Middle East, and Russianisation in Russia. He further concluded that the most potent challenge to the West would arise from the anti-western cooperation between Islamic and Confucian states. He obviously had in mind the cordiality between China and such Islamic countries as Pakistan and Iran.