Clash of Civilisations
To when can we trace the roots of the so-called, ‚Clash of Civilisations’ between Christendom and Islam that the Twenty-First Century is, according to many intellectuals, characterised by and embroiled in?
We could pick the date of the foundation of the State of Israel, officially recognised by President Truman in 1948 and the subequent first Arab-Israeli war, or the actions of the Stern gang, a group of Jewish ‘extremists’ who assassinated, amongst others, a UN mediator (Count Folke Bernadotte, who, during the second world war negotiated the release of 15,000 concentration camp prisoners) for suggesting that Jerusalem should be under Palestinian administration.
We could also, arbitrarily, pick the date of the fall from power of Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically elected leader of Iran, who, as a result of a CIA and MI6 (Operation Ajax) supported coup carried out ostensibly to oust a communist dictator, was overthrown and spent the rest of his life in prison. The real reasons for this coup however, were to protect the interests of Western companies in Iran (in particular British Petroleum) from the dreaded threat of nationalisation which would have meant that the vast oil wealth of Iran (9% of the world’s proved reserves) would have gone to the people of that country. As we all surely know, this coup led to the installation of the Shah, a puppet leader who brutally suppressed opposition to his rule, supported by the West and the dreaded SAVAK (the Iranian secret police). In light of these facts it is therefore unsurprising that the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the installation of a more democratic government than had hitherto existed under the Shah, led the American government to declare Iran a rogue state. It is also unsurprising that Iran now refers to the US as ‘the great satan’. If we reversed the situation and it were an Iranian supported putsch of the democratically elected government of the UK or USA we were discussing, there would be little need to explain the hatred, outrage and contempt we would hold for the Iranians for their interference in our affairs and government.
Or perhaps the funding of Al-Quaeda (The Base), by the CIA in their struggle against communist aggressors in Afghanistan which led to a situation analogous in some respects to the Spanish Civil War where thousands of freedom fighters rallied to the cause of their oppressed brothers, among them people such as Osama Bin Laden, who received training from the CIA and also worked as a CIA operative, is a good starting point for an exploration of the so-called ‚Clash of Civilisations’, a term which has become common currency in the media and also in diplomatic circles.
This randomly picked starting point, lends an understanding to the subsequent actions of Al-Quaeda. Osama Bin Laden, trained by the CIA to struggle against foreign aggressors in a country not his own, perhaps had trouble understanding why his offer of help to protect his own country (Saudi Arabia) against supposed foreign aggressors (Iraq), aggressors who, it turns out, had not been planning an invasion of Saudi Arabia and whose forces were not massed along the Kuwait border with Saudi Arabia as American intelligence (CIA) had falsely claimed, was turned down, in favour of help from the U.S and its allies. This was the so-called justification for the first U.S. (for Muslim extremists, read here ‘godless infidels'’) bases in Saudi Arabia, a Holy land for Muslims around the world. We will not mention here the false grounds given for prosecuting the first Iraq war which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim men, women and children. Perhaps this snub to Osama and his freedom fighters by the U.S. and the subsequent stationing of American bases throughout the Middle East, with the ulterior motives of preventing Israel from being surrounded and securing the world’s greatest energy resource, motivated Osama to take up arms against his erstwhile friends. Or maybe Osama doesn’t exist and never has. Like God, the evidence for existence or nonexistence thereof is scant.
How are we to understand the aggressive imperialist actions of the supposedly freedom-loving, democratic U.S. who fund terrorists and commit terrorist acts, such as the bombing of innocent civilians, while at the same time fighting terrorism by committing terrorist acts and bombing innocent civilians? Trying to practice such doublethink is enough to make one submit and let the aggressors have their way. But which aggressors?
We are told that trying to understand the terrorists is simply not possible. They are pure evil sowing disorder and terror indiscriminately throughout the world. Why, then, are their targets usually U.S. embassies, military bases, or Western corporations and chain hotels frequented by our supposedly ‘democratic’ elite?
If there is a so-called ‘clash of civilisations’, then why would 39 per cent of Germans not want Poles living in their neighbourhoods, whereas only 36 per cent do not want Turks living in their neighbourhoods? If there is a so-called clash of civilisations then why are Turkey and Egypt consistently the largest purchasers of American weapons after Israel? If there is a clash of civilisations, then why are American military missiles and bases stationed in some of the most staunchly Muslim countries in the world? If there is a clash of civilisations, then why was there no furore over Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, in contrast to Iran’s present attempts to acquire nuclear weapons? If, indeed, there is such as thing as a unified Western civilisation, then why does America continue to act unilaterally, or with the meagre support of little brother, UK? Why is the Franco-German stance on issues such as Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, the second Iraq war, Guantanamo Bay, so significantly different from the stance of the USA on such matters? Perhaps it is America’s belief in ‘carrot and stick diplomacy’, in throwing their weight around that the French and Germans take umbrage with.
If there is a clash of civilisations, then why has China (whose human rights record is appalling and who carry out 90 per cent of executions world wide, a nation, furthermore, which has nothing like a democratic system and which possesses a large nuclear arsenal) been given ‘most favoured nation’ status by the US?
The fact of the matter is, that this ‘clash of civilisations’ only exists when it is expedient for it to do so. When you need a reason to rape a country’s natural resources because you know they cannot adequately defend themselves, then you say things like ‘undemocratic, tyrannical, oppressive…terrorist/rogue state/axis of evil…’ or words to that effect. When it’s a powerful country that could also have the same labels applied to it but whose friendship you want to court because it is advantageous to do so, you keep quiet.
The case for a ‘clash of civilisations’, argued for so convincingly by Samuel P. Huntington, in his book of the same name cannot be denied, but to say that the next major conflicts we will have in the Twenty First Century will be civilisational ignores so many other issues and oversimplifies the matter greatly. It is of course easy to say, as Bush has done, ‘you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’ (also us, in many cases - doublespeak again). People like simplifications and over-generalisations. The Manichean struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, East and West, North and South, Islam and Christianity is one that appeals to our more primal instincts, our ‘us and themism’ to coin a phrase, but we must look beyond such simplistic definitions of an increasingly interconnected and complex world. We all want to live within a comforting new paradigm through which we can make sense of the chaotic world around us, a paradigm which creates social cohesion in decadent societies where the masses are becoming disillusioned with the ‘democratic oligarchy’ they live within (in most Western countries, 90 per cent of the wealth belongs to ten per cent of the people and this wealth divide is growing at the expense of the middle classes which are being eroded by neo-liberal politics propagated by the elites in these respective countries).
The project for the new American century declares as one of its main aims, the securing of energy resources and it is surely no coincidence that these energy resources lie in Muslim countries. Perhaps it is too simplistic to say that there is a struggle for control of these energy resources and that this struggle will determine whether Western hegemony throughout the world can be maintained, or whether Western power and influence will decline, as we have seen in decadent societies since civilisations began, but it is certainly no more simplistic than arguing for, and thus lending weight to, the absurd idea that there is a ‘clash of civilisations’. Wars don’t happen just because of religion. They happen because the status quo is threatened or because the balance of power (at the moment, Western hegemony) cannot be maintained. And wars happens because of a lack of resources leading to starvation and a subsequent battle for those resources. Maybe we are not witnessing a clash of civilisations, but rather an attempt by non-Western nations to secure a piece of the ever decreasing pie that has for so long now been shared only among Western nations. Maybe too, these ‘lesser’ nations, countries with populations of 1.3 billion (China) and one billion (India) want a democratic distribution of the wealth and also want a more proportional say in Western controlled organisations such as the IMF, WTO, World Bank and the UN which have such a powerful influence on their everyday lives. (For example, despite having one sixth of the world’s population, India does not a permanent seat on the UN security council!)
Before we begin spreading the ‘light of Western democracy’ (which concentrates the wealth of many in the hands of a few) throughout the world, perhaps we should reform our own institutions and organisations, making them more democratic. This would surely be the best way of promoting peace and freedom throughout the world: by showing every citizen of this planet that they too have a say in what goes on and that the world is not run by an oligarchical elite who have the power to control the rest of us. It is, sometimes, but not often, the disenfranchised who turn to violence when there are no means left open to them, a violence which has killed an insignificant number in comparison with the millions killed by largely undemocratic nation states.
This is an opinion piece and any reference to persons living or deceased is purely intentional. Any disputation of facts will of course be welcomed but for the time being I can’t be bothered to list my sources. I assure you though that most of my facts are ‘straight’.
posted by pfarrad @ 06:08
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