Debates over Just War and Jihad: Ideas, Interpretations, and Implications across Cultures

Abstract

Is there a clash of cultures or civilizations between the West and the world of Islam? When looked at from one perspective, this is a meaningless question, the wrong question to ask. For both cultures are quite complex, including varieties of forms of religion, variations in local or regional attitudes and customs, differing views on the best way to achieve cultural ideals, and many other factors. Moreover, the lines of difference between the two cultures have blurred as they have interacted over history and continue to interact in the present. For example, what does it mean to talk of a clash of civilizations in the contemporary United States, where the number of Muslims is greater than the number of members of some well-established Protestant Christian denominations, where Muslims have risen to professional and business prominence, where Muslim immigrants and their children and grandchildren have assimilated into American culture and participate broadly in American life, and where Muslim names have proliferated across the population? There is no necessary or inevitable clash of civilizations or cultures here, and to ask whether there is one seems a misplaced question.