Terrorism and the “Clash of Civilizations”, Research Paper Example

In the article “The Clash of Civilizations?” first published in the prestigious political journal Foreign Affairs in 1993, Samuel P. Huntington presents the hypothesis that the main source of global conflict in today’s modern world “will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions between humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural,” meaning that conflicts related to global politics “will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations” (22). But is Huntington correct via his assumption that most (if not all) future conflicts will be based on culture instead of ideologies?

The best way to determine the accuracy of Huntington’s premise is to examine the history of several terrorist incidents with a focus on the foundation of these incidents as they relate to politics, cultural differences, and in many instances, differences in religious belief and ideologies. However, at this point, I tend to disagree with Huntington, due to agreeing with the observations of James Graham who notes that Huntington sees conflicts between nation-states as a “new phenomena in a world dominated for most of its history by conflicts between civilizations” based on ideology and economics, and because Huntington “completely fails to account for indigenous cultures” that more often than not collectively comprise a separate civilization and have been known to fight inter-cultural battles via military means (“Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations”).

Perhaps the best place to begin is to define the term “culture.” According to Donald Nardo, a culture consists of a large group of individuals that share a common language, along with traditions, religious beliefs, food, social customs, and commonalities related to the arts (34). Some excellent examples includes the Middle East which as a collective civilization shares a common religion (Islam), a common language (Arabic) and traditional social beliefs and practices that date back thousands of years; in ancient times, there was the Roman Empire which shared a common language (Latin), a common religion (polytheism or the beliefs in many gods and goddesses), and social/political beliefs and practices based on the concept of the Republic and Roman law.

Historically, various civilizations like ancient Rome, the Persians (Persian Empire), and the Greeks, “clashed” with other civilizations and with each other; for instance, the Persians vs. the Greeks during the Peloponnesian Wars. However, these and other “clashes” were also based on ideologies or a difference in opinion regarding the mandating of a particular type of religion, such as Islam vs. Christianity, or what type of governmental system should be mandated, such as a monarchy (Great Britain) and a democracy (Colonial America). Therefore, Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is nothing new; the same could be said for cultural clashes that occurred in the distant past (China and Japan, for instance), and those occurring today in places like Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni), Iran, and Afghanistan.

The first terrorist incident is the attack at the Munich, Germany, Airport on February 10, 1970 in which an El Al (Israeli) passenger bus was attacked by three terrorists linked to the Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In this attack, one passenger was killed and eleven others were severely injured; the perpetrators were caught by the Munich police. The second of these two groups, a.k.a. the PDFLP, is an extreme leftist organization whose goal is to create a Palestinian State in line with the geographical borders of Israel as they were before the Six Days War in 1967. The PDFLP is also a Marxist organization that vigorously encourages the concept of Palestinian nationalism or a nation-state separate from that of Israel (Nardo, 78). Thus, although this attack was culturally-based (i.e., Palestinian vs. the West/Israel), it was also based on clear differences in ideologies related to religion (Islam vs. Judaism and Christianity), and ethnicity via a long-held hatred of the Jews and the Jewish State by radical Palestinians.

The second incident which occurred some two years later is the infamous terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics on September 5, 1972 when a group of Palestinians belonging to the “Black September” organization kidnapped eleven Israeli athletes. In the ensuing mayhem, nine of the Israeli athletes were killed, along with five of the perpetrators (Nardo, 145). Much like the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the “Black September” organization was dedicated to creating a Palestinian State and based its name on an attempted coup d’état against King Hussein of Jordan who retaliated by sending thousands of Palestinians to their deaths and forcibly removing thousands more from their Jordanian homeland. Also like the PDFLP, this terrorist group held specific ideologies related to religion and especially politics, due to the fact that King Hussein was Pro-West (Nardo, 156).

The third incident occurred in June of 1976 and is recalled today as the Entebbe Hostage Crisis. Once again, this incident involved radical members of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine who commandeered a jet owned by Air France with more than two hundred and fifty passengers on board. Once the plane was under their control, the perpetrators forced the pilot to fly to Uganda. One month later, all of the passengers were rescued by Israeli commandos (Marret, 548). As with the previous incidents, the PDFLP took responsibility for this terrorist act against a perceived Western enemy (France) that supported the State of Israel and its right to exist. Thus, along with being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli, the members of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the “Black September” organization were products of their cultural environments that “clashed” in opposition to those of the West and were highly influenced by radical Palestinian ideologies, determined for the most part by “specific, and often local, historical, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors” (Marret 541).

The fourth incident was perhaps the first of its kind involving “Islamic” terrorists who seized the Grand Mosque, located in the city of Mecca, on November 20, 1979. Despite the fact that this particular mosque is sacred to all Muslims, more than two hundred “Islamic” terrorists took almost a hundred and fifty Mecca pilgrims as hostages and following a long drawn-out battle against Saudi and French military forces, two hundred and fifty Mecca pilgrims ended up dead (Nardo, 183). However, the major difference related to this event as compared to the Munich Airport and Munich Olympics attacks and the Entebbe Hostage Crisis is that the participants were predominantly Muslim, thus making it what Graham refers to as a collective enterprise composed of individuals from the same culture, i.e., an inter-cultural confrontation between individuals that share many of the same ideologies related to religion, politics, and social custom  (“Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations”).

Lastly, on June 14, 1985, two Lebanese nationals hijacked a TransWorld Airlines flight that was on its way to Rome after a stopover in Athens and demanded that the pilot fly to the city of Beirut in Lebanon. This time around, the perpetrators were Lebanese “Hezbollah” terrorists which Marret describes as a socio-political Shiite Muslim organization that promotes Islamic Jihad or an ideological/religious war against the West and all of its allies, especially Israel (549). After being held hostage for seventeen days, the airline passengers were released when Israel agreed to free a large number of Lebanese and Palestinian nationals which Israel had deemed as terrorists. From an ideological standpoint, the main goals of Hezbollah which still exists today and is now much stronger and influential than it was in the mid 80’s is to bring an end to all “colonial entities in Lebanon,” a reference to former British rule, and establish an Islamic regime in Lebanon (“Hezbollah History”). Clearly, these “colonial entities” like Great Britain and France “clashed” with the political radicals of Lebanon and the Hezbollah, thus making their relationship one of clashing ideologies based on religion (Islam vs. Christianity/the West), and cultural differences.

Therefore, I must wholly disagree with Huntington’s premise that all future global conflicts will be cultural rather than ideological as it was during the years of the Cold War via the U.S. against the Soviet Union which in itself is an excellent example of an ideological clash between communism and Western democracy. What I mean by this is that ideologies based on religious, political, and ethnical beliefs and practices have always been and forever will be the source for cultural conflicts and for the existence of terrorism, whether between the Sunni and Shiites in present-day Iraq or Al-Qaeda and the West. One important aspect of Huntington’s premise is certainly responsible for this disagreement, for as pointed out by James Graham, the most damning evidence against Huntington’s premise is that civilizational conflict is more likely to occur “between groups that are culturally similar” and that exist “within the same civilization and not between them” (“Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations”), an indication that ideology will be the driving force for cultural conflict well into the future.

References

“Hezbollah History.” Web. 2012. Accessed 7 November 2012. http://middleeastconflict.

net/hezbollah-history

Huntington, Samuel P. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs. 72.3 (1993): 22-49 Web. Accessed 4 November 2012. http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/faculty/hauser/ps103/readings/huntingtonclashofcivilizationsforaffsummer93.pdf

Graham, James. “Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.” Web. 2004. Accessed 6 November 2012. http://www.historyorb.com/world/clashofcivilizations.php

Marret, Jean-Luc. “Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb: A “Glocal” Organization. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. 31 (2008): 541-552. Web. Accessed 6 November 2012. http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/publications/articles/Studies_in_Conflict_and_Terrorism.pdf

Nardo, Donald. The History of Terrorism. New York: Compass Point Books, 2010