Islam and the Clash of Civilisations: Rethinking Huntington's Paradigm
- Mohammed Umar Aziz
- Sep 19
- 14 min read
Introduction:
“Is Islam fated to clash with the West?” This is the question Samuel P. Huntington posed in his famous Clash of Civilizations thesis, where he predicted that “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural” (Huntington, 1996:22). Huntington grouped the world into vast cultural blocs, “Western” and “Islamic” chief among them and argued that their values were so irreconcilable that confrontation was inevitable. In the years that followed, particularly after 9/11, this framework dominated policy debates and media narratives. Bernard Lewis warned of the “roots of Muslim rage” (Lewis, 2004:60), and leaders used the language of civilisation to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the surveillance and marginalisation of Muslim communities at home. Yet to describe the relationship between Islam and the West simply as a “clash” is both misleading and dangerous. As Edward Said pointed out, it is not civilizations that clash, but rather the interests of those who control power (Said, 2001).
The question is not just theoretical; it matters urgently today, especially when considering the situation of so-called Muslim nation-states. Their technological lag and military haplessness relative to their Western counterparts mean they are unable to prevent the devastation and genocide in Gaza, even if they had the prerequisite willingness to. Therefore, they are reduced to a bystander role, caught in a cycle of endless verbal condemnations, recently encapsulated by Israel’s attack in Qatar, an ambiguous promise from Donald Trump being the only thing stopping such an attack from happening again in the future. On an individual level, Huntington’s thesis shapes political discourse, with questions of integration once again gaining prominence due to the rise of Islamophobia across Europe.
This essay will therefore challenge Huntington’s framework on several fronts. First, it will interrogate the generalisations of labelling certain geographies or demographics as a homogenous culture, or ‘civilisation’. Second, it will challenge the notion of exceptionalism regarding colonialism and the imposition of Western hegemonic values such as liberalism and secularism. This is vital, as conquest and imposition on the ‘Other’ does not necessarily point to its superiority. The presumed Islamic propensity for violence is also contended, highlighting how the principles of liberal and secular thought experience the very pitfalls that Huntington superimposes on Islam. In this, challenging Huntington’s thesis is key, as ideology may be more significant in mapping the Clash of Civilisations over vague notions of culture laid out along vast swathes of land.
The Fallacy of Civilisational Honogeneity:
Initially, a fallacy of hasty generalisation can be asserted when considering Huntington’s grouping of six remaining civilisations, two of which are Islamic and Western. Regarding Islamic civilisation, Huntington discerned huge geographical areas under one title (Huntington, 1996:45), thus portraying Islam, or countries that may have Muslim populations, as a monolithic entity, where Edward Said related that “Certainly neither Huntington nor Lewis has much time to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization" (Said, 2001). For Bernard Lewis, who is frequently cited by Huntington, he posits that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ in his 1990 Article The Roots of Muslim Rage, “is no less than a clash of civilizations — that perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present” (Lewis, 2004:60). The language of otherising, reductionist stereotypes and distortions are tackled by Said in Orientalism, that the East is portrayed as an ‘Orient’ constructed by the West, so that it can have authority over it, and possibly homogenise their own culture as a response to it (Said, 1978:3). Likewise, Tamara Sonn, in Overcoming Orientalism notes that there is a “rich diversity of approaches to Islamic thought” (Sonn and Esposito, 2021:104), which is self-evident as Muslims are the majority in some fifty-seven countries, which have vast cultural differences. For example, their ethnic and linguistic diversity differs widely, from Arabic to Urdu to Malay (Sonn and Esposito, 2021:122). This is why Huntington’s analysis of cultural homogeneity is largely inaccurate.
This is particularly surprising, however, when one considers how Huntington espoused the nation state as having the “apex of modern loyalty” in the Modern West, and “Groups transcending nation states — linguistic or religious communities, or civilizations — have commanded less intense loyalty and commitment.” (Huntington, 1996, 174). How could there be a monolithic cultural entity such as ‘Western’, ‘Islamic’, etc., when they are split up by borders, each having different ideologies, governments, and ways in which to organise their society? Lewis also alluded that the formation of the nation state of Turkey was Atatürk, “rejecting European domination and embracing European civilisation at the same time” in his lectures on Europe and Islam (Lewis, 1990:119). In this case, it produces an anomaly for Huntington to contend with, that a nation-state is both attempting to become secular as a republic, while also expressing itself in religious terms, showcasing an epistemological renovation (i.e., from Ottoman governance to secularism), with the strong ontological consciousness of an Islamic self-image (Ahmet Davutoglu, 1994:7).
Islamic Exceptionalism and the Western Claim to Superiority:
There may be a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ between Islam and the West based on what is known as Islamic exceptionalism, in that each culture, in this case Islam, is superior to all other systems (Huntington, 1996:213). This is not mutually exclusive to Islam however, as an underlying premise of colonialism and imperialism is a racial and civilisation superiority, that it confers rights, such as conquest and imposition of its values over the ‘Other’ (Said, 1993:17). This impact of colonisation cannot be understated, as “To say simply that modern Orientalism has been an aspect of both imperialism and colonialism is not to say anything very disputable” (Said, 1978:123). There are numerous examples of this, particularly in Lord Cromer’s book, Modern Egypt, which he penned while serving as British controller-general in Egypt. He states that it would be “absurd”, if Europe has to endure a “government based purely on Mohammedan principles and obsolete Oriental ideas” (Baring and Of, 2010:565) He necessarily believed in the superiority of Western civilisation, and employing this over a ‘lesser’ culture was imperative, that Western ideologies, education and values had to be imposed so people would “lose their Islamism”, therefore only being indebted to those aspects of their religion which are the “least worthy options of his nominal religion” (Baring and Of, 2010:230) Meaning, their religion would become nothing more than a religion which is privatised and individualised, not meant for societal organisation, as these are the aspects of the religion which would cause individuals to become recalcitrant towards ideologies which are the banality of their way of life, thus serving as the very epitome of secular ethics. However, this has never been the case with Islam, thus alluding to its exceptionalism, and the clash of civilisation with the West, notably the Anglosphere.
This may also produce a flaw in Edward Said’s post-modernist framework, that he is an “intellectual ill at ease with all kinds of local or parochial attachment… an intellectual sensitive to the lure of a free-floating non-identity” (Dallmayr, 1997:44). This showcases the fact that Said was not particularly arguing from a point of objective truth but highlighting “Orientalism as a system of truths”, that it was a political doctrine “willed over the Orient” (Said, 1978:204), because of its weakness, not necessarily because of its appeal to a higher, or more moral truth. Likewise, Wael Hallaq mentioned that Said could not undertake a profound investigation of orientalism, leaving their “political manifestations in the larger modern project” largely untouched (Hallaq, 2018:13). This purveys a significant blind spot with regards to Said’s analysis of remaining agnostic between the Occident and the Orient, as post-modernism is a “challenge to totalising theory and the construction of meta-narratives” (Skeggs, 1991:258), making his analysis devoid of the “genealogical foundations that give rise to it [Orientalism]” (Hallaq, 2018:11). Said thus places his thesis in a moral arbitrariness, which is not reticent of the reality of the matter both historically, and when contemplating upon modern-day power politics, as John Mearsheimer (2001:360) suggested that in the 21st century “realism will offer the most powerful explanations of international politics”. This is alluding to the prediction that competing civilisations will have to engage in foreign policy tactics which ensure the survival of their hegemony, as a way to secure their exceptionalism, whether it be liberal democracy, Islamic governance, or possibly a budding Chinese hegemon in Asia and Africa (Mearsheimer, 2001:401).
Ideology Over Culture: Secularism, Liberalism, and the Propensity of Violence:
The clash of civilisations is more prominent with regard to ideology than culture. As elucidated above, culture is something that is heterogeneous across every demographic, so it is difficult to pinpoint a potential brewing conflict based on these lines. Rather, what is more prominent is the propagating of Western hegemonic values such as secularism and liberalism, with “Anglophone political philosophy is generally conducted in the light of the perceived triumph of liberalism. (Joseph Andoni Massad, 2016:2). This version of colonialism targeted the educational systems of Islamic areas, causing an “epistemic rupture” (Hallaq, 2019:2), where free to attend madrassahs and halaqas were structurally destroyed, to “split the Muhammaddan world, and break its moral unity” (Joseph Andoni Massad, 2016:68). In the modern age, the promotion of these ideologies abroad occurs at the hands of the Anglosphere, as the “promotion of democracy is central to the George W. Bush administration’s prosecution of both the war on terrorism and its overall grand strategy” (Chomsky, 2016:102). The “structural genocide” caused by these two cooperating factors meant that Islamic scholarship lost its juristic powers, endowed to it by their religion. An example of this is how Wael Hallaq suggests “by [the] 1900s… there was not a single ṣūfī master, an Adab writer, a Qur’ān commentator, a Ḥadīth specialist, a Mutakallim, or a metaphysician left who could operate and produce works within the relevant tradition that had thrived only a century earlier” (Hallaq, 2019:8). This was because the modality of the resulting Ulema (scholars), had completely shifted to the Western hegemony, and its educational systems. This is also particularly prominent when you consider Ibn Khaldun’s theory, that “the vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive characteristics” (ʿabd Al-Raḥmān B Muḥammad Ibn Ḵaldūn et al., 2015:197). This alludes to the fact that the soul sees perfection in the person to whom they are subservient, (on the apparent) to. This is apparent because the West has been militarily superior, to which Huntington suggests “To liberate themselves from this subservience, Islam must develop its own engineers and scientists, build its own weapons (whether nuclear or conventional, he does not specify), and 'free itself from military dependence on the West'” (Huntington, 1996:214). This supposed intellectual and moral superiority laid the groundwork for this form of colonialism, where you no longer need to necessarily fight on a battlefield to achieve a victory of ideas. In this way, the ‘Clash of Civilisations’, based on ideology rather than culture, is a much more appropriate factor when summarising the relationship between Islam and the West.
This notion of ideology is also vital to disavow the conception that the secular, liberal Western hegemony is superior to the Islamic epistemic approach. Huntington mentions that “Modernisation and Westernisation go together” (Huntington, 1996:73), and that Muslims have to adopt secularism as a way to modernise and become more ‘Western’. However, secularism “implies a historical process . . . in which society and culture are delivered from tutelage to religious control and closed metaphysical worldviews” (Cox, 2013:XX). In essence, it’s a closed worldview that “functions like a religion”. Thus, this moral arbitrariness has led to secularism becoming a “cult of human self-worshipping”, in which “science has become the new God of Western modernity and postmodernity” (Mālik Badrī, Ward and Jomma, 2017:23). Likewise, Emile Durkheim, the prominent scholar of secularism, proposed that "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." (Émile Durkheim, 2012:62). This definition is devoid of a Divine Being; rather, it can include any transcendental idea which emphasises that belief and unbelief are not rival theories, but different ways of experiencing life.
In accordance with the above sentiment, liberalism fulfils many of the same criteria, with moral arbitrariness causing “Liberalism to become an entrenched ideology”, that rather than being one of several possible axioms of organising society, it has become that which it "was critical of in the first place" a meta narrative such as the (perceived) oppressive nature of a society which presupposes Islamic ontology and its implications within governance, in other words, it has become its “own exclusive club” (Kaminski, 2021:8). This Western hegemony is in line with Fukuyama’s thesis that “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” (Dallmayr, 2004:254). Liberalism is, however, just as prone to fundamentalism and oppression as Huntington and Mill consider Islam, or ‘Islamism’ to be, where this notion of Orientalism and superiority has been prevalent. For instance, John Stuart Mill suggests in his Considerations on Representative Government, “that compulsion over 'uncivilized' peoples in order that they might lead productive economic lives, even if they must be 'for a while compelled to it,' including through the institution of 'personal slavery.'” (Deneen, 2018:50).
Islam, Resistance, and the Charge of Violence:
Islam’s intransigent adherence to its creed and jurisprudence has contemporaneously harboured negative connotations of the religion of over one-billion people as being ‘medieval’ and ‘backward-looking’ (Ahmed Paul Keeler, 2019:10). Paired to this, Muslims, or rather Islam, are seen to have a disproportionate propensity towards violence, and Huntington suggests this is due to the principled militarism and indigestibility of Muslims towards non-Muslims (Huntington, 1996:264), this being a key point as to why cultural differences are irreconcilable. Huntington presents a self-defeating argument in this regard, because previously in his book he states that “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.” (Huntington, 1996:51). Cavanaugh also challenges the “argument that there is something called religion—a genus of which Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and so on are species—which is necessarily more inclined toward violence than are ideologies and institutions that are identified as secular” (Cavanaugh, 2009:5).
Here lies the root of 'religious violence,' the unstated belief that violence committed in the name of secularism, or liberalism, is excusable, at times even merited, as it heralds a better future, a superior civilisation. In this way, the propensity of liberalism for violence and genocide should not be undermined. This sentiment is conveyed by one of the ‘founding fathers’ of liberalism, John Stuart Mill, who said, “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians” (John Stuart Mill and Collini, 1989). This suggests the paradoxical nature as to which each individual has autonomy to define their own vision of the good, except if you are seen as a counter hegemony, in which case, despotism is permitted. The ‘barbarians’ are the people who fall short of the civilisational requirements, i.e., those who are devoid of Enlightened values. This is sometimes branded as an ‘evolved liberalism’ as Kaminski (2021:8) suggested, but pay heed to the fact that the above statement is from J.S. Mill, the scholar of liberalism, par excellence. Thus, this ‘evolved liberalism’ ceases to be devoid of the ideological roots upon which it was founded, proving that the liberal propensity for violence is not a castigation, but indeed a consistent walkthrough of its principles.
Essentially, liberalism entails the “pursuit of immediate gratification… As a result, superficially self-maximizing, socially destructive behaviours begin to dominate society”. (Deneen, 2018:39). This also would entail the domination of any counter hegemonies as explored above, as the guise of individual autonomy has only “given rise to a social and cultural world in which the constructionism of voluntarist arbitrariness is ascendant, and in which the possibility of true human freedom has, as a result, been largely vitiated” (Spiker, 2023:112). This is the reality of the clash of civilisations between Islam and the West, based on ideology and moral arbitrariness, not necessarily culture.
Conclusion:
To conclude, we have seen the flaws in Huntington’s thesis, based on supposed cultural homogeneity and the myth of religious violence. Likewise, exploring Edward Said’s Orientalism also exposed the limits of the post-modernist framework, which too often ignores the structural realities of power and hegemony. The evidence suggests that the real clash of civilisations between Islam and the West is not grounded in vague cultural differences, but in ideology.
Western claims to superiority, whether through colonialism, secularism, or liberalism, are less about inherent cultural values and more about the imposition of power, justified through meta-narratives of progress, rationality, or democracy. Islam, by contrast, continues to resist absorption into this hegemonic order, maintaining a civilisational project rooted in divine law, communal obligation, and a metaphysical worldview distinct from Western secularism.
The persistence of Orientalist stereotypes, Islam as backward, violent, or irrational, serves to legitimise this project of domination, obscuring the West’s own reliance on violence, conquest, and exploitation to secure its position. Liberalism and secularism, far from being neutral frameworks, function as ideologies with their own “religious” dimensions, prone to fundamentalism and justified coercion in the name of civilisation.
Thus, the so-called clash of civilizations is best understood not as a cultural inevitability but as an ideological struggle. It is a struggle between Islam’s refusal to reduce religion to the private sphere and the West’s insistence on universalising its secular-liberal order. As long as foreign policy continues to be guided by realism and the pursuit of hegemony, confrontation will remain likely, not because civilizations are destined to clash, but because ideologies compete for supremacy.
The question that remains is whether the future will be shaped by domination and exclusion, or by a recognition that multiple epistemologies can coexist without one demanding supremacy over the other. If the West persists in treating its worldview as final, then Huntington’s “clash” may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, one driven not by cultural inevitability, but by the relentless imposition of power.
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