الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

Islam and the West… for a better world @

b) “to limit the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states”; c) “to exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states”; d) “to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests”; and e) “to strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests and values”. The “Clash of civilizations” thesis gained some support from a number of academics in the West but many of them opposed it from various intellectual standpoints. Part of the opponents to Huntington criticized his approach to civilization and his perception to its relationship with culture (3) . Others challenged his classification of civilizations and his tendency to consider them as static entities with no internal dynamics and no capacity to interact with each other. A third category of opponents focused on the hidden political agenda behind the “Clash of civilizations” thesis, considering it as a tool for the re-shaping of the US foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Edward Said concluded his paper “The Clash of Ignorance”, published in 2001, by saying that: “ ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ thesis is a gimmick like ‘The War of the Worlds’, better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.” (4) But the fiercest opposition to the “Clash of Civilization” thesis came from the empirical side. It was criticized by a number of academics who considered that it was based on “anecdotic evidence” and was not well grounded at the experimental level. Mohamed Braou for example sees that “the examples used in the thesis are partially selected or suffer

(3) Jack F. Matlock JR. Can Civilizations Clash? Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143(3):428-439 (1999). (4) Edward W. Said. The Clash of Ignorance. The Nation , October Issue (2001).

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