Samuel Huntington Clash Of Civilizations Analysis

Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" is one of the most influential articles that is used by policymakers in formulating foreign and international decisions. However, It is also one of the most controversial articles at the time for it claims that a religion will be the main reason for future conflicts. This article has attracted a lot of criticism from many different academics and scholars, predominantly from fellow Harvard academic Edward Said, who is the speaker of the lecture " the myth of the clash of civilization."The speaker criticizes the "clash of the civilizations" because it is a recycled version of the "cold war" theory, oversimplified the classification of different civilization groups and, it separates the culture from …show more content…
The speaker has raised some valid points in pointing similarities between the article and the cold war theory, but has failed to grasp the concept of civilization conflict and competition. He ignores other examples of other civilization conflicts such as China's rush to economically colonize Africa, for he focuses only the west and the Islamic civilization standoff, being that he is from Palestine and the time when article was written is filled with a lot of anti-western sentiment in the Muslim world caused by key events such as the western aid to Israel, the growth of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan ,the Yugoslav breakup wars and etc. The speaker has also used straw man fallacies to support his claim, for example, as Huntington is a partisan, he automatically labels ever other civilization as anti-western civilizations. Also, the speaker has used a genetic fallacy to strengthen his position for since Samuel Huntington used news journals and not academic sources of information, he automatically shows prejudice because news articles are subject to being sensational and biased to suit its audience. Another example of …show more content…
This is a valid point but, the speaker has failed to understand the importance of religion in determining your cultural identities, which shall lead to the creation of fault line wars, for example Yugoslav breakup is mainly attributed with the rise of cultural identities. The speaker has yet again used a red herring to talk about how official culture is different from actual practice of culture, for their many rebel cultures that disregard official cultures practices. In conclusion, the criticisms put forth by Edward Said is raises a lot of valid points such as ''clash of civilizations" being similar to the cold war theory, arbitrary in its classifications and unfair for separating religion from culture. However, the speaker has failed to grasp several key points such kin country syndrome, inter-civilization conflict and cultural fault line wars. The speaker has also resorted to using various fallacies to strengthen his claims, but has failed to address the article itself