Islam & clash of civilizations - Term Paper Example

If culture would be the main driving force, then what is culture? There could be hundreds of meanings just for a single world. Summarizing these meanings, it is defined as the collection of philosophies and concepts which are being shared by people. However, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) expounded on the meaning of the word as: “the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society or a social group, and encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together with value systems, traditions, and beliefs” (Dilworth & Maital, 30).

With these presented to the public, what is happening after the Cold War is a product of diverse beliefs of people who were ruled by leaders who influenced them in having such views. Huntington also puts in a higher cultural grouping of people which is the civilization. He divided human kind into several major civilizations. Amongst these civilizations, what is more prominent especially in the news is the Islamic civilization. They are not just fighting for their civilization to be the strongest but they are also fighting that their religion is more superior to what is dominating the other civilizations (Huntington, 25; Gogstad, 1).

There have been published materials that are pointing to the Islamic civilization to be the most susceptible in clashes towards the other civilizations. It was more likely that the clashes began with the Islamic civilization going against the West. One conflict though is that a country who belongs to the Islamic civilization is an ally of the West. This country is Saudi Arabia. The West imports its oil from Saudi Arabia which makes the West one of the key importers of its economy (Brooks, A27; Barber, 4-5; Chomsky).

Huntington’s thesis was written in 1993 where the emergence of wars in the Middle East began. It was the time when the West