H-Net* Fwd: PREDICTIONS OF NON-MUSLIM ON CONTINUED CONFLICT BETWEEN ISLAM AND THE WEST!

[Asiah Abdullah]

 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:18:15 +0300
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From: aaa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: PREDICTIONS OF NON-MUSLIM ON CONTINUED CONFLICT BETWEEN ISLAM
AND THE WEST!

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Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 06:49:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Islamic News and Information Net <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: [ININ] William Reese-Mogg's Forecast of worldwide conflict on the Islamic fault-line
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Bismillah irRahman irRaheem
In the Name of Allaah, The Most Gracious, The Most Kind
----------------------------------------------------------------------------! ! -

Hijri date: Wednesday 12 Jumaada al-THaany 1420 A.H.



Forecasts of worldwide conflict on the Islamic fault-line
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A prophet of doom

by William Reese-Mogg

(http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/09/20/timopnope01002.html?999)

The world is full of violence. There are the massacres in East Timor; the
murder of 300 Russians by terrorist bombs, probably related to Chechnya;
the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians and then of the Serbs in Kosovo; the
Nato bombing itself, which has left Serbia devastated and Kosovo polluted
with unexploded cluster bombs; the grumbling confrontation in Kashmir
between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers; Saddam Hussein's plans
for weapons of mass destruction; the Anglo-American response of sanctions
and bombs. However safe we may feel going about our usual business in one
of the West's great cities, this century of! ! violence is ending with
worldwide violence, and the threat of worse to come.

Those episodes of violence which seem of more than local relevance, or
have resulted in intervention by the United Nations or the United States,
all have something in common that the world is very reluctant to
recognise. In one sense, East Timor, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq and Kashmir
are all parts of a single global problem - they are all conflicts between
Islamic countries or ethnic groups and other cultures.

They are not all confrontations between Islam and the West, though Iraq is
such a confrontation, and is recognised as such throughout the Islamic
world. Even the great Arab peacemaker, King Hussain of Jordan, said that
the Gulf War was "a war against all Arabs and all Muslims and not against
Iraq alone". The West is also deeply involved in the conflict in East
Timor; the East Timorese are Roman Catholics, and Australia is the leading
peacekeeping! ! nation.

Yet the other three conflicts are not of Islam against the West, but of
Islam against other world cultures. Kashmir is a conflict between the
resurgent Islam of Pakistan and the resurgent Hinduism of India. Chechnya
is a conflict between Islam and Russia, the core nation of Slav Orthodoxy.
Kosovo is an even more extraordinary situation, a conflict between Islam
and Slav Orthodoxy, in which the West intervened on the side of Islam.

In 1993 Samuel Huntington, a Professor of International Studies at
Harvard, published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that after the
end of the Cold War conflicts between civilisations would dominate the
future of world politics. He gave warning of the seriousness of
"fault-line conflicts" between civilisations, and was much criticised for
his observation that "Islam has bloody borders". East Timor, Chechnya,
Kosovo, Iraq and Kashmir seemed to confirm that observation, whether or
not ! ! one thinks that Islam is the more to blame in any particular case.

In 1996 Professor Huntington expanded his argument into a book, The Clash
of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order (Simon and Schuster,
16.99), which was described by Henry Kissinger as presenting "a
challenging framework for understanding the realities of global politics
in the next century". To an alarming degree, Professor Huntington's
analysis seems to be proving accurate.

His thesis is that the people of the world have grouped into separate
civilisations which have been a powerful force of cohesion in early human
history. "Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the (Ancient)
Greeks had in common . . . of all the elements which define civilisations,
however, the most important usually is religion." He identifies several
major contemporary civilisations: the Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic,
Orthodox, Western and Latin American, all mor! ! e than 1,000 years old.

The four largest are the Chinese, Hindu, Islamic and Western, each with
about a billion people. Each has its founding religion, around which the
civilisation is formed: Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.
China and India are the core countries of their own civilisation; the West
is seen as double-headed between the United States and Europe; Islam has
no core country, which makes it more difficult to relate to from the
outside. Islam and the West, in different ways, present the world with the
greatest difficulties. The West is perceived as claiming a unique
dominance; it represents both a universal power, based on American
technology, and a universal ideology, based on liberalism, democracy and
human rights. The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was seen by
the Chinese, and by the other civilisations, as a symbolic exercise of
Western arrogance.

The other civilisations perceive the ! ! West as alarmingly powerful in
military and economic terms, while being undermined by social
indiscipline, the break-up of the family, loss of religious belief, crime,
drugs and the underclass, as well as by ageing populations, low savings
and unemployment.

The West may see itself as the model for the next century; all the other
civilisations see as much to avoid as to emulate. "The West is
overwhelmingly dominant now and will remain number one in terms of power
well into the 21st century. Gradual, inexorable and fundamental changes,
however, are also occurring in the balances of power amongst
civilisations, and the power of the West . . . will continue to decline,"
Huntington says.

In the 75 years between 1920 and 1995, the West's share of political
control of territory declined by 50 per cent, of world population by 80
per cent, of world manufacturing output by 35 per cent and of military
manpower by 60 per cent.
Islam is divided into some 45 independent states, but is united by the
strongest of the great world religions, in terms of its cultural hold on
its followers. It has one great economic advantage - control of much of
the world's oil reserves, which are predicted to run out some time in the
next century. It is still in a stage of rapid population growth and
Muslims are expected to make up about 30 per cent of the world's
population by 2025. Already, Islamic immigration has caused a strong
political reaction in Western Europe; half of the babies born in Brussels,
the headquarters of the European Union, are to Arab mothers. Young,
unemployed and disaffected Muslims are a threat both inside their own
countries and to the West.

"The Islamic resurgence has given Muslims renewed confidence in the
distinctive character and worth of their civilisation and values compared
to that of the West. The West's simultaneous efforts to universalise its! !
values and institutions . . . and to intervene in conflicts in the Muslim
world, generate intense resentment among Muslims."

The danger lies in the reaction between this revival of Islamic
confidence, backed by a growing population, and the fears of the
neighbouring civilisations. All the neighbouring civilisations feel
potentially under threat. The West is concerned about oil, nuclear
proliferation, immigration,the survival of Israel and human rights. The
threat to Russia is even more direct, from the current wave of terrorism
and claims for independence. The Serbs fear a greater Albania. India fears
Pakistan and potentially the alienation of the 100 million Muslims in
India itself. China is concerned about Central Asia and about the Chinese
in Indonesia. The non-Muslim population of sub-Saharan Africa has
anxieties as well.

It cannot be said that Professor Huntington's proposed remedies are as
convincing as his analysis! ! . I am more optimistic than he seems to be about
the future relationships of three of the four largest civilisations. I
expect the West's relationships with China and India, and their
relationship with each other, to continue to improve.

Islam is the unresolved problem. Certainly the West needs to show much
greater insight into the Islamic revival, which will develop further.
Arrogance, cultural supremacism or downright hostility must be the worst
possible response. Yet, as in Serbia, the neighbours of Islam will find
their own populations reacting to Islamic revival. It was fear of the
Albanians in 1987 which brought Milosevic to power. The world is not going
to find it easy to bind up the "bloody borders" of Islam.

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