Islam, Media & the West

Emily Faeth
Islam, Media & the West
Paper 1
September 29, 2008

In today’s very complicated world, the ‘clash of civilizations’ argument can be beneficial in shedding light on issues; by simplifying complex dilemmas, more people can understand the situation with ease. There are also major drawbacks to such reductionist explanations of complex times and groupings of people. By pitting the West against Muslims, the clash sets up a monolithic and heterogeneous way of looking at both diverse groups of people. As Mamdani says, the ‘clash of civilizations’ assumes that every culture is definable. I agree with him that we should try to explain and define more by historical events than by differences of culture and religion. With its ahistorical approach, the clash does not take into account that the world is constantly changing.
Lewis and Huntington seem to be saying the essence of Islam is anti-progressive and bloodthirsty, while the West is modern and stands up for equal and just human rights. These racist and normative views of “the other” diminish the credibility of the clash for me. Lewis’s clash thesis leaves hardly any room for interpretation; however, although Huntingon breaks down the world into more civilizations than Lewis does, there are still clear dualities in the civilizations he chooses to write of in his paper. Huntington argues that the clash is not a one sided war being waged, but is used by both Muslims and Westerners. He uses quotes about the war between America and the people of Islam from both Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and Jordanian King Hussein to prove this (35,36). The clash thus assumes that religion is bigger than any socio-political aspects of the world and sets up America as an imperialistic force in the world, fighting Muslim fundamentalists.
Pasquellini argues that what the West means by fundamentalism in describing Muslims who “model the entire society according to its religious principle” regardless of non-believers is in fact integralism (11). Although she disagrees on terminology, she does speak in terms of the ‘clash of civilizations’ and says that “[b]orn as anti-colonialism and continuing as anti-imperialism, fundamentalism now became a global attack on the west, its values and way of life, which are radically rejected, indeed demonized” (13). Pasquellini sites Rushdie’s death penalty as an example of this way of thought, and goes on further to say that the West resents actions such as this and think of them as a backlash to modernity.
Mamdani writes that historically, the West sees itself as the center of the modern world and way of life, and this egocentric view is apparent in the clash. He believes that fundamentalism in the Islamic world is a “response to modernity” as opposed to resistance to modernity, and that terrorism is a “political encounter”, (Mamdani 61, 62). He goes further to say that the roots of these rejections of Western values are a direct result of ridding the Arab world of colonialism. Huntington also addresses the issue of non-Western civilizations becoming modern, but he argues that they “attempt to reconcile this modernity with their traditional culture and values” (49). Huntington goes on to saw that the West must continue to have economic and military strength in relation to other civilizations. Although the clash has a reductionist view in that religion is the stemming point of political terrorism, I disagree with this. Political terrorism actually is a result of history and past events, as Mamdani believes. Mamdani, although not in ways as simplistic as Lewis and Huntington, does believe in the clash but says that political Islam is the direct response to both colonialism and American imperialism.
Although the clash does have historical significance in so far as colonialization is concerned, Lewis’s argument of Muslim emulation of the West seems to be backed solely by opinion. Lewis goes as far as to write that Muslims’ mood of hostility and rejection “is surely due to a feeling of humiliation—a growing awareness, among the heirs of an old, proud, and long dominant civilization, of having been overtaken, overborne, and overwhelmed by those whom they regarded as their inferiors” (59). By using this tone, Lewis’s blatant feelings of superiority to Muslims are expressed in a way that make the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis completely jeopardized by racism. I do believe that a clash exists in the world today, but by using this language Lewis encourages me to dismiss the clash as extremist, as I might dismiss the words of bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden believes in the ‘clash of civilizations’ although he is very open in his belief that this is a religious war that “subsumes a political war” (xx).
Bin Laden uses the term America or Judeo-Christian in the same light that Lewis or Huntington would use the “West”, although Lewis and Huntington include Europe in their claims where bin Laden is more focused. Bin Laden’s binary clash is between the Muslim world and that of the Judeo-Christian alliances whom he blames for “oppression, hostility, and injustice” towards Muslims (25). Bin Laden also blames “the blatant imperial arrogance of America” for not allowing Muslims to arm themselves as well as for targeting Muslims for “the hostility of the Judeo-Christian alliance” (25). These statements show a support for the binary argument of two opposing cultures that goes deeper than the borders of nation-states.
The ‘clash of civilizations’ is easily spotted in the Western modern media, be it on television or in Thomas Friedman’s New York Times editorials. Despite all of the problems and intricacies stated here, the clash gives people a base line to start from in which to base their arguments from. However, these complexities in the clash argument stop receivers of media from fully understanding the oppositions that do exist in the world. Bin Laden speaks about how ignorant it is that the Western world doesn’t believe that al-Queda and bin Laden have modern technology, while it is clear that they have been using technology to distribute their beliefs to the modern media (126-127). The Western media often makes Muslims seem like simple people who have no modern appliances, in accordance with the view of the ‘clash of civilizations’ that the Muslims are backwards and old fashioned. The paradox that exists today is the use of modern technology for the “unmodernization” of the Islamic world, but that is rarely discussed in the media, as are the uses of modern technology for the jihad against modernity.
I believe that the ‘clash of civilizations’ does exist today, and plays an important role in how Westerners perceive the Arabic and Islamic worlds. However, I don’t want to believe that the clash has to stay static in its views while the rest of the world is changing and societies evolve. While differences exist between all civilizations, not only between the West and the Arabic world, we must at least attempt to take these differences in stride and accept them instead of manipulating them to be opposing forces. The media fuels the argument of a clash by consistently using the same phrases and buzzwords that reinforce the ideologies that we currently accept without question in the West. If a duality somehow does not exist between the Western world and the Islamic world but people on both sides act and talk as if the binary is a definite, I have to argue that the ideology of that binary comes to be the truth in society.