{"id":196,"date":"2006-09-20T09:05:20","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T13:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=196"},"modified":"2006-09-20T09:05:20","modified_gmt":"2006-09-20T13:05:20","slug":"the-clash-of-civilisations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"The Clash of Civilisations"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Carey teaches me Christian humility. No matter how sure I am of my own righteousness, I begin to doubt it when I see him galumphing up<\/a> to join me at the barricade. So, should I reconsider the defence of Ratzinger, now that Lord Carey has come down in favour of Jihad and Crusade?<\/p>\n\n

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a “clash of civilisations”.
\nArguing that Huntington’s thesis has some “validity”, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
\nLord Carey went on to argue that a “deep-seated Westophobia” has developed in recent years in the Muslim world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

OK: this is a report in the Times.<\/em> It may not fairly represent what Carey meant.1<\/a><\/sup> For all we know, he quoted Huntingdon in order to disembowel him. But the point about Carey is that he had a shrewd political sense on questions that did not touch his self-importance. One shouldn’t take his remarks at face value as an analysis of the situation: rather they represent a second-order analysis — his answer to the question “what should a World Spiritual Leader say in this situation?” and from that we conclude that he thinks that a struggle is inevitable, if not under way.<\/p>\n\n

Now this is a question of fact, to some extent independent of the value question about whether such a struggle should exist. Clearly, you can make a struggle more likely by pretending it has already begun. But, just as clearly, you can’t make one vanish, after it has begun, just by denying its existence.<\/p>\n\n

There is a secondary question, in the event of a clash of civilisations , which is whether it should be pursued by violent means or not. To take an example from an earlier period, one could be in favour of fighting communism while also believing it right to minimise the amount of fighting communists.<\/p>\n\n

Thinking in these terms brings a little clarity to the debate. It leads to three possible positions among non-Muslims. Let’s call them, for short, Cole, Ratzinger, and Carey.<\/p>\n\n

The Cole position is that there is no global struggle between Islam and Christianity. It follows that this non-struggle should certainly not lead to violence, and, where it seems to, both faiths have been perverted.<\/p>\n\n

The Ratzinger position is that there is such a struggle but we must not talk in those terms. The two faiths are<\/em> rivals and do<\/em> threaten each other’s well-being. Nonetheless, violence is wrong. Persuasion must proceed by peaceful means. (The status of this “must” is a little unclear. How do I compel you to be peaceful?)<\/p>\n\n

The Carey position seems to be that there is a struggle, both physical and ideological; they are being violent. So we must talk about the struggle and be prepared to use violence to defend our position. I’m using here “we” in the broadest sense. I can’t remember what he thought about the Iraq war, but he would certainly be in favour of the “Christian” side in Nigeria or Darfur.<\/p>\n\n

I think I am a Cole-ite, though Ratzinger clearly has a case. But the Carey-ite prophets have a certain self-fulfilling quality. At some stage, if there are enough of them, they will become right.<\/p>\n\n

1<\/sup> In my experience, assuming that his speeches meant anything<\/em> did violence to the quality of his argument. But I may be misjudging this one. I haven’t seen it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Carey teaches me Christian humility. No matter how sure I am of my own righteousness, I begin to doubt it when I see him galumphing up to join me at the barricade. So, should I reconsider the defence of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}