argued, the world is becoming more modern and less Western (1996: 78). Of course,
people are different, but for Huntington these differences can only lead to exclusion
and antagonism. Thus, he insists that religion posits a basic distinction between a
superior in-group and a different and inferior out-group, and cultural questions
(like the mosque at Ayodhya or the status of Jerusalem) tend to involve a yes–no,
zero-sum choice. For self-definition and motivation, people need enemies (1996: 97,
130). Here is the core of a quasi-fundamentalism.
Of course, civilisational differences are real and important, but Huntington was
wrong to see them as a necessary source of antagonism. Abou El Fadl has rightly
stressed the mixed lineage of civilisations (2003: 82). It is true that many Muslims
are not convinced when the USA attempted to present its demonisation of political
figures like the executed Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, as something other than raw
hostility to Islam per se. It should however be remembered that it was a US-led
NATO that intervened in Kosovo to defend the human rights of people of Muslim
faith against their Serbian (and Christian Orthodox) oppressors. This hardly fits the
clash of civilisations thesis.
Huntington himself linked what he called ‘Muslim assertiveness’ to social
mobilisation, population growth and a flood of people from the countryside into
the towns (1996: 102, 98). This is surely a social rather than a purely cultural
explanation for antagonism. Moreover, only a realist schooled in state-centric
analysis and rooted in American triumphalism could ignore the adverse effect of
the insensitivity and arrogance of US policy-makers upon others. It is not that the
differences he speaks of are unimportant. Rather it is that he fossilises them, fails
to see the contradiction between the ‘culturalist’ and sociological dimensions of his
analysis and he ignores the tensions within the so-called Western tradition between
neo-liberal and social democratic strategies and values. His work was a good
example of the way in which an extreme statism (with its conservative and superficial
assumptions) can lead in the direction of fundamentalism. Divisions are taken for
granted, so that it could be argued that there is a danger that the fundamentalism
of the ‘other side’ is merely inverted rather than transcended.
Chapter 17 Fundamentalism 395
- Fundamentalism differs from the state, but it is important to note the continuities.
Fundamentalism seeks to monopolise the truth and use violence against enemies. So does the
state. Of course fundamentalism is much more extreme than, say, the liberal state, but it takes
to an extreme what are statist tendencies.
- Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis is an example of a kind of academic quasi-
fundamentalism that absolutises differences, and sees violent conflict in terms of cultural and
‘civilisational’ values. Instead of seeking to distinguish between for example liberal and
fundamentalist Islamic doctrines, he treats Islam as a homogeneous culture that is staunchly
opposed to ‘Western values’.
Criticisms of fundamentalism
