[Assam] Is the ?Clash of Civilizations? a Myth?

[Chan Mahanta]

Didn't have to wait long at all. Even though this 
writer does not use Dilip's quotes to hold up a 
certain 'religion' as the answer, he does, as 
always, goes to the heart of the 
issue--Hinduism's superiority over them others. 
How do I know? I have read a few of them in the 
past and found them to be quite forgettable. In 
fact this writer, although he disavows Hinduttwa 
here, comes off smelling like a dedicated one in 
some of the other pieces that I ran into in the 
past.













At 1:15 PM -0800 3/16/06, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
>I'd like to share the following article 
>published in the Sentinel editorial section. I 
>don't know if the author is on the editorial 
>board. The author is well focused.
>Dilip
>=========================================================
>Is the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ a Myth?
>Bikash Sarmah
>W ith the march of civilization and the concomitant
>socio-political, economic and religious fallouts,
>the world seems to be debating as to whether it
>is religion that acts as the most potent 
>political force. There may be atheists and 
>agnostics rubbishing the claims of religion, as 
>a force in the political sense, and other 
>non-religious factors contributing to those very 
>claims. But, practic! ally speaking, religion 
>does matter in the politics of the new world 
>order. This should not have been the case. Given 
>new scientific insights and technological 
>strides, and where scientists are questioning 
>the role of God as a creator, religion should 
>not have been a factor to reckon with. 
>Unfortunately, it is very much so. And that 
>seems to have sustained the “clash of 
>civilizations” as theorized by Huntington.
>Any debate on the East-West conflict is 
>essentially a debate on the struggle between the 
>Islamic and the Christian world. Let us accept 
>it, though it sounds bitter. Why the struggle? 
>There are at least two clear answers. One, it is 
>the quest for dominance over the other that 
>fuels the struggle. The bitter truth is that the 
>votaries of the “clash” are driven by absolutist 
>tendencies often verging on sheer fanaticism. 
>The Christian world finds itself more liberal 
>and liberating, drawing its strength from the 
>tradition of democracy. The Islamic world, on 
>the other hand, ! finds itself more cohesive, 
>drawing its strength from the tradition of 
>Islam, and giving the impression of its 
>tentative tryst with democracy. The Christian 
>world finds a labyrinth of antiquated ideas and 
>beliefs in the Islamic world, seeing in the 
>latter an element of aggressiveness. As for the 
>Islamic world, the Christian West seems to be 
>corrupting Islamic values and influencing Islam 
>to serve western interests. However, the fact 
>remains that both the worlds are embroiled in 
>the vortex of fears; for both, it is the fear of 
>the other that sets in motion the vicious cycle 
>of the “clash”.
>Two, conservatives in both the worlds have 
>betrayed the very cause of religion. What is 
>cause then? Obviously spirituality. And 
>spirituality does not require one to be 
>religiously devout. Its dimension is different: 
>higher and transcendental. Its concerns are 
>different: humanism and hence some sort of a 
>refined or redefined internationalism. Clearly, 
>it is this failure on the part of the cham! 
>pions of both Islamic and Christian world to 
>project the philosophy of religion, that has 
>been the most effective contributory factor to 
>the “clash”. I call it effective because when 
>the two worlds fight each other, it is the 
>essence of religious philosophy — spirituality — 
>that suffers the worst blow, and any suffering 
>of that sort — of the very essence— fosters the 
>fight. Durable disorder? Or is it any 
>inevitable, perpetual neo-order?
>Of all the interpreters of the “clash of 
>civilizations”, I have found Dr Wafa Sultan not 
>only radical but also highly pragmatic. Until 
>yesterday, she was an unknown Syrian-American 
>psychiatrist living in Los Angeles. Today, she 
>is an international sensation, earning the wrath 
>of the Islamic world engaged in the “clash”. It 
>was a radical, provocative interview she gave on 
>the hugely popular Arab channel Al-Jazeera on 
>February 21 that led to her becoming a 
>sensational Muslim voice. According to New York 
>Times, the interview was viewed on the Interne! 
>t more than a million times and “has reached the 
>e-mail in-boxes of hundreds of thousands of 
>people”. Wafa Sultan, 47, believes that “our 
>people”— meaning Islamists — “are hostages to 
>our own beliefs and teachings”. It was 
>“knowledge” that “released” her “from this 
>backward thinking”, and “somebody has to help 
>free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs”.
>Sultan’s interview on Al-Jazeera had 
>conservative Islamic clerics condemning her as a 
>heretic and an infidel who deserved to die. 
>Muslim liberals and reformers, on the other 
>hand, hailed her for her courage to bluntly say 
>the truth. She said: “Only the Muslims defend 
>their beliefs by burning down churches, killing 
>people and destroying embassies. This path will 
>not yield any result. The Muslims must ask 
>themselves what they can do for humankind, 
>before they demand that humankind respect 
>them... The Jews have come from the tragedy (the 
>Holocaust) and forced the world to respect them, 
>with their knowledge, not with their ter! ror; 
>with their work, not with their crying and 
>yelling... We have not seen a single Jew blow 
>himself up in a German restaurant. We have not 
>seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not 
>seen a single Jew protest by killing people.” 
>Now one must understand that she is not speaking 
>on behalf of the Jews or, for that matter, 
>supporting the Jewish agenda on Palestine. She 
>does not tend to overlook the aberrations of the 
>Jewish discourse. The fact of the matter is that 
>she is simply — and honestly — projecting her 
>views on the jihadi attributes of the Islamic 
>world that does seem to believe in democratic 
>protests; the Prophet Mohammad cartoon 
>controversy and the subsequent violence being 
>one indicator of growing intolerance.
>Clerics in Syria have already denounced Sultan 
>as an infidel. Some Islamists believe that she 
>did Islam “more damage than the Danish cartoons 
>mocking the Prophet Mohammad’’, to quote New 
>York Times. This sort of a reaction is natural 
>given that Sultan is a woman! voicing her ire 
>against aggressive Islamic tendencies, and a 
>woman roaring so quite logically, despite being 
>a Muslim, goes counter to the ways of the 
>Islamists. But one needs to understand the 
>genesis of the rebellious Sultan. While pursuing 
>her medical studies at the University of Aleppo 
>in northern Syria, she saw gunmen of the Muslim 
>Brotherhood — a radical Ezyptian Islamic group — 
>storming into her classroom and killing her 
>professor. That was in 1979. Since then, her 
>life has changed; her perspectives redefined; 
>and she has searched for a meaningful dialogue 
>into the role of Islam in the “clash of 
>civilizations”.
>Sultan asserts: “The clash we are witnessing 
>around the world is not a clash of religions or 
>a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between 
>two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash 
>between a mentality that belongs to the Middle 
>Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 
>21st century.” Very powerful words, very 
>provocative. Sultan definitely runs the risk! of 
>being misinterpreted as she discerns the “clash” 
>as one between two mentalities. However, since 
>we must live up to the cause of a progressive 
>world order where debates ought to hinge on 
>rationale, it is important and necessary that we 
>interpret Sultan the rebel correctly and read 
>her mind. By the “21st century” mentality, she 
>does not mean the Christian world as such, nor 
>by the “Middle Ages” mentality does she mean 
>Islam as a religion. Sultan’s assertion is 
>against primitive minds who refuse to change and 
>who are conditioned by the past. Her struggle is 
>against the barbarism of the day — in the name 
>of religion. She is all for modernity, the one 
>that shapes human minds with the power of reason.
>The political concept of religion is a poisonous 
>one, be it political Islam or Christian West or 
>Hindutva. Religion is a private affair, and must 
>be so, so that we do not regress to 
>psychologically primitive times. As a matter of 
>fact, no one has seen God! What is worrisome is 
>that pro! gressive minds do not tend to be 
>outspoken critics of the rubbish that goes in 
>the name of religion. What is lacking is courage 
>— to see the truth, to say the truth and cling 
>on to it, come what may. The “clash of 
>civilizations” is a misnomer then, in the sense 
>that civilizations, if they are really so, do 
>not fight each other. Only barbaric forces are 
>aggressive and absolutist. Liberals from both 
>the Islamic world and the Christian West must 
>assert so. And Hinduism, as a Vedantic way of 
>life, can be of immense help, but not Hindutva 
>as an aggressive political concept. This is so 
>because Vedanta propounds the theory of 
>internationalism, though as an ideal. Even its 
>practice is possible, but only when one 
>understands, like Wafa Sultan, the “clash” as 
>between primitive minds who are determined not 
>to progress. A clash against the ‘‘clash’’ is 
>what we perhaps need.
>
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