Thoughts on Huntington and Said

The first thing I read, after our class discussions Wednesday night, was “Clash of Civilizations,” which turned out to be a fairly amusing, if be it disturbing, read. Some of his points I could nod my head to (explained in depth below) and then (of course) some of his claims made me go "wt?” and then ask “how the heck did you get there?”. So maybe I'm missing information, but the following comments are a few of those which garnered the previously described reaction. 

1. “the people active in fundamentalist movements are young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and business persons” (p. 26). So, maybe I'm unique in this understanding, but in my experience it is not mostly “young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and business persons” who are principally active in fundamentalist organizations. From my experiences, fundamentalist groups pull from a) family indoctrination b) having limited options and picks something existential to blame life's problems on c) being themselves what they hate in others d) wanting to have strict rules for themselves after being scared among life's chaos e) these groups are also still a mix of people not all one type or not f) well I'm getting tired of listing more possibilities so we'll stop here.
2. “cultural commonalities increasingly overcome ideological differences, and mainland China move closer together” (p. 28). I feel like its the guns China has pointed toward the Taiwanese that has the two countries “moving closer together” versus “cultural commonalities”. Granted this article is from '93 and I don't know the then current state of those two countries' relations, but looking at now Taiwan is not wanting to be a part of China.
3. “founded originally in the 1960s by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of admission to the European Community” (p. 28). To this I just wanted to ask “what changed to make Turkey suddenly feel like it has a chance to be a part of the European Community through the EU?” I should add also that I do not know the current state of Turkey's in or out status in regards to the EU. Who does know?

However, disputing facts of Huntington or his opinions is, in my opinion, not what's most important or what is the most interesting/engaging aspect of this article. The truly interesting aspect of this article is the danger this article, and those like it, directly and indirectly pose to people's perceptions of the world's "Civilizations" and most importantly people's views of the Western/Islamic relationship. The real danger of authors like Samuel Huntington (and even Bernard Lewis to an extent) is how quickly a person can believe them. This is not an ignorable thing, but something very real.

During my first read through of Huntington's article, I started to notice a change within myself—an almost acceptance or understanding of the skeleton of his thesis. I was surprised that I could near-agree with him on the idea of identity how it starts small, but gets bigger and bigger (see Roman example) and on the idea of big civilizations being the big players in the soon to be history; I was surprised because of the thoughts and opinions I had heard in class. I finished Huntington's piece and decided to do other tasks for a bit as I thought about what happened and something clicked. The simplicity of Huntington's argument is what makes him so dangerous. Most Americans (indeed people in general) read for pleasure or the gathering of intel, but most, in my experience, do not read with their critical lens on—arguably in part because to be fully critical requires some background of knowledge in the topic area. For example, I read whatever interests me, but I don't always have enough background information on a topic to be fully critical. Its in this step that traps so many people into thinking and agreeing with Huntington and this general philosophy of thinking. Simplicity. Huntington takes out all of the complicatedness and makes generalities without complete explanations. He draws on Westerners already existing pre-conceived notions of our superiority and uses it to 'exempt' him from having to use explanations and facts that go beyond skin deep. Course, then I go and read Said and find him saying the exact same thing—about the simplicity of Huntington's argument, that is. The one particular thing that Said wrote that I hadn't thought of or didn't think about was in reaction or in light of the 9/11 attacks. According, to Said Huntington's article was quoted as 'future-telling', but Said poses the question “but why not instead see parallels, admittedly less spectacular in their destructiveness, for Osama bin Laden and his followers in cults like the Branch Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones at Guyana or the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo?”. This truly important question leads me to want to ask all the people who revere Huntington's work “did he really 'predict' the future and future international relations, or are we making the future fit into his work? Did Huntington really see anything forthcoming, something his contemporaries were missing, or was his analysis so simple (thus so understandable) that it fits almost every version of the future to come?”. I don't have an answer, only inklings or feelings. Maybe you do; likely the rest of our readings will shed further inklings or suggestions into my pool of explanation options.

-W.H.B.