Two Civilizations and Ethnic Conflict: Islam and the West.

Date Published:

Jul 1, 2001

Abstract:

Samuel Huntington's controversial "clash of civilizations" thesis posits that, among other things, the extent of both international and domestic conflict between 'civilizations' will increase with the end of the Cold War. This is expected to be especially true of clashes involving the Western and Islamic civilizations and even more so for clashes between these two civilizations. In this article the author, using the Minorities at Risk dataset along with independently collected variables, tests these ethnic conflict propositions of Huntington's. The results from the author's analysis are examined from there perspectives: globally, from the perspective of the Islamic civilization, and from the perspective of the Western civilization. Globally, there has been little change in Islamic involvement in civilizational ethnic conflict since the end of the Cold War. However, from a Western perspective, the proportion of civilizational conflicts involving Western groups that are with Islamic groups increased dramatically after the end of the Cold War. Thus, the results show that if one focuses narrowly on the perspective of the Western civilization, there is some support for Huntington's claims regarding Islam, but not for a general increase in civilizational conflict. However, from the perspective of the Islamic civilization and from a broader global perspective, ther is little support for Huntington's argument.

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38, no. 4(2001): 459-472.