The Financial Times reported in a recent article By Gideon Rachman that the tendency of aggression against Muslims and a sweeping desire in promoting security, now finds supporters throughout the Western world, not among the extreme right only. This article said that although the decision of US President Donald Trump on the prohibition of entry of nationals of seven Muslim countries was opposed, the decision marks the beginning of other efforts in the United States and Europe to limit Muslim immigration to the West.
The article mentioned the strategic dimension of the decision as a reflection of Trump’s conviction about the need to fight the battle to save the Western civilization from Islam and Muslims. The author finds the fact that the closest adviser to Trump, believes they are fighting a battle to save Western civilization, is the key to understanding the Trump administration. This helps to understand why the US president pledged in his inauguration speech to defend the civilized world, not the free world, the term that was used by President Ronald Reagan and President John F. Kennedy.
This is catastrophic by every standard. If that is true, a new clash of civilizations may be looming. But first we need to ensure that we are dealing with the other from a civilized or ethnic or religious perspective, not for political and ideological motives. The poor political expertise of President Trump in international relations probably plays an important role in the use of this term; the distinction between “the free world” and “the civilized world” seems at the president’s interest and not against it.
The “free world” was used during the Cold War era. The non-Communist world was usually referred to as the free world, including the United States, Western Europe, Australia, the Commonwealth countries and even Israel. Therefore, it seems likely that President Trump has ruled out this term because it looks outdated. If he had used it again, he would be inevitably accused of ignoring the present variables in international relations, and calling back the cold war. He would have been accused of seeking to wage a cold war against Islam and Muslims as long as he used the term that has been linked exclusively to that historical era.
So I tend to exclude using divisions of civilization (a civilized and an uncivilized world) to start a civilizational conflict with the Muslim world. What is more likely is that President Trump used this term to express his vision to parts of the Muslim world. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser who resigned recently and was close to Trump in recent months, told the New York Post in July that the Islamic world is a failure. In August, he made a speech to an anti-Muslims group in Dallas where he described Islam as an essentially political ideology. From an intellectual perspective, this miserable characterization of our Islamic religion, however, does not mean, by extension, a clash of civilizations.
Another important point to understand what is behind the statements of Trump and his Chief of Staff is that this shocking intolerance is not limited to the Muslim world. There are verbal attacks on Mexico and China, and even on the very idea of globalization which the United States exported to the whole world. There are discussions and calls to reconsider free trade agreements, and even the WTO agreement itself. Also, the Trump administration’s position on the refugee issue is not related to Islam but to fear and concern about terrorism.
It is true that right-wing hostility to Islam and Muslims is sweeping the world, but it is hard to say that there is a clash of civilizations on the go in the world today, after the theory of civilizations clash put forward by Huntington in the last quarter of the twentieth century had been rejected.
I wish the Arab and Muslim world would take these important propositions and analyzes seriously, and that we work on removing what justifies them—first and foremost, terrorism, which provides the opportunity to tarnish the image of Islam and Muslims. All of us must face it more seriously, not at the military level only, but also at the intellectual, cultural, and educational levels. The comprehensive approach against terror, especially when it comes to the intellectual level, is not taken seriously in some parts of the Islamic world. The talk about the renewal of religious discourse was fruitless. The outcomes of conferences, seminars and lectures were vague demands and calls for actions.
Before we start fearing about the attitudes of the Trump administration or others towards the Muslim world, we have first to prevent any pretexts that play against us, starting with eradicating the sources of terrorism.
