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« Back to Islam and the West: Is There a Clash of Cultures? main page    Transcript for: Islam and the West: Is There a Clash of Cultures?Think Tank Transcripts:Islam and the Wes ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. The Islamic populationof the world is over one billion people and growing. Through thecenturies, Islamic and Western cultures have often been at odds eventhough their teachings share many of the same basic tenets. Joining us to discuss the role of Islam in the modern world areFouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the School ofAdvanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University; MiltonViorst, senior scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of'Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World'; and JohnEsposito, professor of religion and international affairs atGeorgetown University and author of 'The Islamic Threat: Myth orReality?' The topic before this house: 'Islam and the West: Is there a clashof cultures?' This week on 'Think Tank.' The West has long seen Islam as a rival culture. A thousand yearsof conflict, from the Crusades to the recent Gulf war and terrorismin New York and Paris, have bolstered this view. But is the clashperception or reality? Islam is the world’s second largest religion, second only toChristianity. Islam continues to expand, especially in Africa.Devotion is often intense, from daily prayer to the pilgrimages toMecca, the holiest city in Islam. Today many Islamic countries aredeveloping modern economies, but most have not adopted Western-styledemocratic institutions. All the countries of the world that are not free are in theEastern hemisphere except for Cuba. The countries that are not freeas defined by the human rights organization Freedom House are shownin red on the map. The next map shows in green the distribution ofMuslim majority countries in the world. Clearly, most of the not freecountries are Islamic. Some analysts see in Islam a culture that is permanently opposedto democracy and to the West. Others argue that there is no suchthing as a single Islamic culture. They say that Islamic societiescan and will go their own ways without posing any threat to the West. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Fouad, let me ask you aquestion. A few years ago, Samuel Huntington wrote a verycontroversial article in 'Foreign Affairs' called 'The Clash ofCivilizations.' Maybe you could just lay out his thesis, and then --I know you have a problem with it -- and then why don’t you tell uswhat’s your problem with it, and let’s talk about that for a moment. MR. AJAMI: I’ll try to do a Huntington -- MR. WATTENBERG: You are now Huntington, right. MR. AJAMI: Exactly. I am now Sam Huntington. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. MR. AJAMI: You know, I wrote -- you may recall, I wrote a responsein 'Foreign Affairs' -- MR. WATTENBERG: Yes, I know that. MR. AJAMI: -- to Sam Huntington, entitled, 'The Summoning.' Sam,in effect, made the argument that in the aftermath of the Cold War --and this is really a caricature of his argument -- that we will nothave a clash of ideologies, that we will have a clash ofcivilizations, and that we will, if you will, from almost the -- sortof the wreckage of the Cold War, we will resurrect these oldcivilizations. It will be Islamic, Confucian, African civilization.He -- Sam identified Latin America as a civilization, and then ofcourse the West, and that these will be the fault lines in the world.These will be the fault lines that matter. Myself, I took an exception to it. MR. WATTENBERG: And he said, if there was going to be a war in thefuture -- MR. AJAMI: It will be a war -- MR. WATTENBERG: -- it would be a war of civilizations rather thanof countries. MR. AJAMI: Yes, it will be a war of civilizations. And my responseto Huntington and my sense at the time was, it was almost interestingthat Huntington, who has been one of the most brilliant students ofthe state, decided to dispose of nation states. I thought thatmodernity for me is universal -- modernity is universal, and that theclash will still be the clash of states, that we still live in aworld of nation states. And the idea that civilizations are blocs,that you can take a look at the whole length and breadth of theMuslim world, all the way from Morocco to Indonesia, and subsume itunder one category, was false. The thing that really moves the world is the logic of interests.States are stubborn beings. They’re monsters. I mean they’re veryunsentimental. And the world economy is what really matters. I meanif we really want to talk about something, when we say that, youknow, several societies in the Muslim world are in trouble, they arein trouble because they cannot compete in a modern world economy. MR.WATTENBERG: Okay, now, are you all Huntingtonians or Ajamiites? MR. VIORST: Well, I am -- I think there is a clash ofcivilizations in the sense that there -- but this is not new. I mean,Christian Western civilization has been in conflict with MuslimEastern civilization now for 1400 years. It’s likely to continue.Whether this means war or occasional terrorism or whatever is adifferent story. I think that Sam Huntington made a wonderful rhetorical leap hereinto something quite, perhaps, useful to debate, but I think even ifone accepts certain premises, and I do, in what he is saying -- MR. WATTENBERG: When you sit down and deal the cards, you don’tdeal -- MR. VIORST: Yeah, it’s going to come out a lot different. MR. WATTENBERG: -- with Islamic civilization, you deal with avariety of nations. MR. VIORST: Well, you deal with a variety of nations, and you dealalso with something that has been both a constant and a -- andsomething in flux throughout all of modern history. My view is that the West defeated Islam, if you want to say that,sometime during the era of the Ottomans three or four hundred yearsago. I don’t think that Islamic civilization is likely to be a threatto the West at any time in the foreseeable future. It is trying tocatch up with itself, and if occasionally it dumps on the West,denounces the West, gets angry with the West, I can understand that.But it’s certainly not going to be a threat to the West. MR. WATTENBERG: If you view Islam as a civilization rather than asa series of discrete nations, it becomes much more threatening,doesn’t it? MR. ESPOSITO: I think part of the problem is that we still tend todeal with these sort of broad categories. You know, we talk aboutIslam, and it’s as if there is some sort of monolithic civilizationout there. I think also where -- I think what Huntington’s article alsoreveals is his generation missing the point in terms of the role ofreligion and international affairs. And so what’s happened is inrecent years, we see not just in the Islamic world, but globally, aresurgence of religion in politics, whether it’s in Sri Lanka or it’sin India, wherever, okay. And I think that -- MR. WATTENBERG: Or in the United States of America. xx MR. ESPOSITO: And in the U.S. And I think that what you see in theHuntington piece is suddenly, having gone through what I call thepolitics of underestimation and overreaction with regard to the roleof religion and ethnicity, and forgetting that, as Fouad said, thatit’s often interest and national interest that become the keyvariables. I mean, when you look at the relationship of the Muslim world,let’s say, to America and you look at Muslim countries, there arecountries that have had a hostile relationship with the U.S., Libyaand Iran, and there are other countries, like Saudi Arabia andPakistan, that have had good relations. And a good deal of that isnot so much based on civilizational as national interests. MR. WATTENBERG: But aren’t American interests everywherethroughout the Islamic world threatened by Islamic fundamentalism? Imean, Saudi Arabia fears Islamic fundamentalists and Egypt fears it,Morocco fears it, Algeria fears it. I mean, I guess the argument is,within Islam is this tendency toward fundamentalist Islam which toooften expresses itself in some sort of terror, or at least such isthe perception. Is that a powerful movement within Islam? Is it amovement that could take over additional states? And would it thenthreaten us? I mean, I guess that’s the argument. MR. ESPOSITO: I think you have to break out the term, though. See,I think part of the problem is we use this term fundamentalism for awhole group of Islamic political and social activist organizations.And I think that, again, these organizations, like nations, arediverse. There are indeed extremist groups out there who in the nameof Islam threaten their governments and their people much more thanthey do, when you think about it, the West. But you also have a whole set of Islamically-oriented politicaland social organizations or Muslims in Muslim societies who in factparticipate socially and politically, and if allowed to do that,would continue to participate in society. I think if we don’t makethose kinds of distinctions -- just as we have to distinguish amongnation states, we have to distinguish among Islamic activists,whatever we want to call them -- then I think we do feed aclash-of-civilizations approach. We’ve got a monolithic threat. MR. AJAMI: See, a generation after the Iranian revolution, yousee, we were traumatized by the Iranian revolution. When Di Arme Inam(ph) came by jumbo jet from Paris to -- MR. WATTENBERG: Bearing audio-cassettes. MR. AJAMI: Exactly. When he returned -- MR. VIORST: Riding on audio-cassettes. MR. WATTENBERG: Excuse me? MR. VIORST: Riding on audio-cassettes. That was the fuel that wasin that jet. MR. AJAMI: When he returned home, we thought surely we were readyfor -- if you will, that we saw the Muslim world as a row ofdominoes. It was a new domino theory. They would all fall. Myself, you know, I had a kind of a skeptical view of this, thatthe Iranian revolution would be almost a revolution in one country.It wouldn’t duplicate itself. And much as we talk about the imminentoverthrow of these Muslim governments and the defeat of the secularmodel, the facts really don’t bear this out. The Egyptian state is not going to be overthrown. We always writeits obituary, but it has been around a long time and it really is inthe saddle. The Saudi state is not really going to be overthrown.There is no likelihood that the fundamentalists or the people whocall them fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia will overthrow the Saudistate. There is no likelihood that they will win in Jordan. And evenin a place like the West Bank and Gaza, there is no likelihood thatthey will prevail against Yassir Arafat. The power -- MR. WATTENBERG: The Hamas group is going down apparently. MR. AJAMI: The Hamas people, they will thrive only if there ispoverty and despair to feed off. When Khomeini returned to power, thegreat man, at the time he said, 'Look' -- someone came to him andasked him about economics, and Khomeini said, 'My revolution is aboutIslam, it’s not about the price of melons.' It is about the price ofmelons everywhere worldwide, and the same is true in the Muslimworld. MR. WATTENBERG: Has there been in the Islamic world anywhere asuccessful functioning democracy? I mean, if that is one of thecriteria by which one says modernity has arrived. MR. ESPOSITO: But the difficulty, I think, in asking thatquestion, in posing it, is if you look at the majority of the Muslimworld, you’re talking about -- until roughly World War II, you’retalking about two centuries of European colonial rule in so much ofthe area, which did not encourage these institutions. Then you’re talking about the rise of modern nation states, mostof which emerged artificially, most of which wound up withgovernments that were run by kings, military and ex-military, andtherefore you have not had a period of history in which you couldwind up with the political sort of culture and institutions beingallowed to develop which enable this transformation to democracy. MR. WATTENBERG: Is there anything in the Islamic culture or theIslamic religion that would stand in the way of a developingdemocracy? MR. AJAMI: See, I -- on the question of democracy, I mean, I takea slightly sort of conservative orientation myself. I believe reallyGeorge Kennan is right when he says, you know, we talk about theincidence of democracy in the world. Democracy is but a habit.Democracy is but the ways of that peninsula of Asia that he describedas Europe. It’s really like if you take a look at the world as awhole, I mean I know people think that the stocks of democracy is up.Is Russia capable of a successful transition to democracy? I have mydoubts. Are the people of the Ukraine capable of a transition todemocracy? I have my doubts. MR. WATTENBERG: I mean the argument has been from an Americanpoint of view that democracies don’t really go to war with eachother, so there is a reason for us to be other than -- MR. AJAMI: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: -- our great humanitarian -- MR. VIORST: How about if we redefine this a little bit, not inparliamentary terms, but merely to say participation? Is theresomething in Islamic civilization which stands in the way not ofdemocracy, because we -- that’s hopeless. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. MR. VIORST: In terms of participation, can the common -- MR. WATTENBERG: Freedom of expression, for example. MR. VIORST: Well, but not just freedom of expression. Can we havegovernment run for the people rather than for the sake of theperpetuation of the state? And the fact is, there has been -- I wouldgo even further than what your question suggests. I’d go further tosay that not only is there not the germs of democracy, but therereally is not much hope even for -- or much precedent even forparticipation. The state has been such a monster throughout all ofthe history of this region, and there has been so little ideologywhich would provide some popular basis for rebelling against thiskind of state. So I’m not only feeling gloomy about the prospect for democracy,but even participatory government. MR. WATTENBERG: Isn’t there -- what one reads about it -- isn’tthere a sort of a tropism toward the modern way of life, towardAmerican television and American movies? And you hear stories ofSaudi Arabia that, you know, they’re officially against drinking andagainst Western dress, but in the privacy of their villas, there is avery different sort of a life going on, and so on and so forth. Imean, is that bubbling? MR. ESPOSITO: I think that as states open up -- because I agreewith what Milton said. I mean, the way the situation is now, there’sa problem, but if states open up, then I think one can expect to seepolitical participation develop. But this doesn’t necessarily -- theproblems of the past don’t necessarily have to be equated simply withthe nature of Islam, because remember that all religious traditions-- I mean Judaism and Christianity had to, in a sense, reinterpretthemselves to make themselves compatible with modern democracy. Andeven Sam Huntington two decades ago said that he saw Judaism andChristianity making the transition, but he wasn’t sure if one groupcould do it, and that group was Roman Catholics. And that’s changed,but he was right when he made the observation. You know, in the 20th century, you’ve had a papal bull that infact condemned what would normally be seen as modernity, and itwasn’t until Vatican II that pluralism was accepted. And so, youknow, traditions do reinterpret themselves. So what I am saying isthat on the one level it’s political and economic factors that areimportant, but then if we say, you know, can the religious traditioncome along, I think that in fact traditions do reinterpret, and ifone looks at what’s going on in the Muslim world today, there aremany Muslim intellectuals who are dealing with the question ofpolitical participation and trying to reinterpret culturalcategories. MR. WATTENBERG: Look, I think from an American point of view, Imean when people think of is it good or is it bad, I think the phrase'gangster state' comes up. With the exception of North Korea, theworld’s gangster states, so-called -- MR. AJAMI: Right, the pariah states. MR. WATTENBERG: -- are Libya, Iran, Iraq, I guess Syria, whatever,where you would have the possibility, for example, of state-sponsoredterrorism. Is that an accident that the great preponderance of thesekind of states are in the Islamic world, in the Arab world? And isthat a passing phase, or is that something that we have to reallyworry about? MR. AJAMI: Look, they are renegade states and I think we shouldview them as renegade states. I mean, I know there are people who saywe should, you know, we should offer the Iranians an olive branch,and so on. We should offer them nothing. We should see the Iranianstate, we should see the Iraqi state, we should see the Syrian state,we should see the Libyan state as renegade states, and they should betreated as such. I mean, I don’t think we should look for other ways of saying, oh,well, what is the connection between these states and the largecivilization and the large cultural container from which they come,because I just don’t think it’s really about that. I mean these arerevisionist states. And we were just talking about participation in states in theMuslim world. The fact of the matter is, if you take a look narrowlyat the Middle East, there are the dynastic states in the Gulf and themonarchical states, and they are a breed apart, and then there arethese national security states, the Syrians, the Iraqis and the like.And you’re right. I mean if you take a look at these nationalsecurity states, they belong to a different world. They came out ofthe anti-colonial world, they came out of a military container, andunless they transform and reform, the life in these societies willremain to be the Hobbesian existence it continues to be. MR. VIORST: Your question, Ben, is the right one in the sense thatbecause Iraqis or Saudis or whoever like television, like occasionaldrinking, like to come to the United States or to Paris in order toenjoy themselves, doesn’t that mean that somehow Western civilizationor Western values, including democracy, are having some impact uponthese cultures? MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, you hear stories of, for example, when'Dallas' was running -- MR. AJAMI: Right, very popular. MR. WATTENBERG: -- very popular -- of the mullahs coming into themosques the next morning and preaching their text from what happenedon the television the last -- MR. AJAMI: Well, that’s the thing, just -- MR. VIORST: Well, all that is correct, and then the next questionis, is this having an impact intellectually, spiritually? And thefact is that Islam is a very powerful religion. It has a huge impact.It has really -- you see very few instances of conversions fromIslam, you see very few instances of the retreat of Islam. Whateveryou may feel in analyzing Islam and its compatibility with modernvalues, the fact is that Islam has served this civilization very wellfor a long time in preserving its identity, and it is doing that now. I think Islam is a lot stronger than 'Dallas.' MR. AJAMI: Just on this line of culture, some years back, not toinvoke our host, you know, you did something. Instead of taking alook at what Huntington says about the clash of civilization, it wasabout America as a universal nation. The fact of the matter is the American model is ascendant in theworld. Now, it doesn’t mean that everything about it is going to beexported. Democracy doesn’t travel so well. What travels about theAmerican model -- a friend of mine, Ali Mozimi (ph), once said thatpeople love that unique American combination: high technology and lowculture. Pop culture travels very well, and it’s indeed kids withsneakers and T-shirts who took on the American example in Beirut andother places. The irony is -- in the Muslim world from 1973 onward, when theArabs, the heartland, if you will, of this Islamic civilization,became rich -- and Iran, because of oil wealth, the irony is twothings came in tandem, Americanization and anti-Americanism. Theplaces became much more dipped into the American orbit, if you will,and they were being assaulted and seduced, and particularly the youngwere being seduced. Milton says that, you know, that Islam is verypowerful. It is powerful, but modern culture is also extremelypowerful, and the temptations of modern culture, this push and pullof modern culture is enormously powerful. And it’s really thesecross-currents in the world of Islam: from one side your ancestor issummoning you back, if you will, to the past; from the other side,the world of the foreigner. And modernity is many things. It’s manythings. It’s a messy thing, this creature called modernity. MR. ESPOSITO: For many people -- MR. WATTENBERG: My sense is the war between the ancestors andtelevision is almost always won by television. MR. AJAMI: Yes, that’s -- MR. ESPOSITO: Well, but for many people in the Muslim world, it’sthe cultural threat. MR. VIORST: Well, but see, I don’t think that’s -- MR. WATTENBERG: All right, let John go. Then you. MR. VIORST: Okay, excuse me. MR. ESPOSITO: For many people in the Muslim world, it’s thecultural threat much more than, if you will, the American or Westernpolitical threat that is seen as the most insidious. MR. WATTENBERG: And this is what has engendered thatfundamentalist backlash. MR. ESPOSITO: Daniel Pipes and I were at ameeting recently, and Dan talked about the fact that -- he quoted a,quote, 'Pakistani fundamentalist' who denounced Madonna and MichaelJackson as cultural terrorists, you know, visited on the country. Well, my comment on that was also that Dan had his source wrong.It was probably myself. Even though I’m Western, I happen to see themas cultural terrorists. (Laughter.) But the point is, they do represent a certain kind of culturalimpact, we can call it low culture or whatever, but that has had anincredible impact throughout the world, not just in the Muslim world. MR. WATTENBERG: But just, I mean if the culture of our allegedlylow pop -- I’m not so sure how low it is, but if that culture isascendant, aren’t the things that go with it -- individualism,pluralism, merit, upward mobility, all those sort of American ideas,which culminate I think probably in political democracy, aren’t theytraveling under cover as cultural imperialists? MR. VIORST: Yeah, but I think it’s a little self-serving to thinkthat they will. Let me put it in a slightly different framework. Ithink that what has always gone on in all religions and hasparticularly gone in Islam in recent decades is a struggle forcontrol. Islam for 1400 years, or whatever you like, has been underthe control of very, very -- a very rigid clerical class who hasdefined the dogma. I mean, you could sit down and read the Koran, asall of us around here have done, and find in it all kinds ofconflicting different -- open, closed, horrible, wonderful --messages. Take what you like. It’s who’s the guy who determines whatthe orthodoxy has been. And I think that Islam has been under the control of a very rigidgroup of people who have passed their law on from generation togeneration for more than a thousand years. I think that there isgenuinely a struggle now over who might grab Islam. It’s going on inEgypt probably more than anyplace else because Egypt is always kindof the spearhead of intellectuality in the Islamic world, but it’salso going on elsewhere. You can also see it in Saudi Arabia. You canalso see it even in Iran. There is an effort to take the momentum ofthe religion away from this narrowly based class. I’m not terribly optimistic that the modernists will win, but Ithink the struggle is going on. MR. WATTENBERG: All right, thank you, Milton Viorst, Fouad Ajamiand John Esposito. And thank you. Please send your comments to: New River Media, 115017th Street, NW, Suite 1050, Washington, DC, 20036. We can also bereached via e-mail at thinktv@aol.com, or on the World Wide Web atwww.thinktank.com. For 'Think Tank,' I’m Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, a recipient of thepresidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, unlocking thesecrets of life through cellular and molecular biology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. 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