False universalism and the geopolitics of exclusion: The case of Islam

Abstract

I regard Huntington's 'clash' thesis in a similar spirit. What is interesting is not the argument, as such, which seems both simplistic and implausible, but its extraordinary resonance around the world. I can recall no other short piece, including even the famous 'X' article of George Kennan, that has elicited such an intense readership. My question, which anchors this paper, is this: what is this resonance telling us? I believe that this resonance is closely related to the theme of this article. Namely, the emergent importance at this historical moment of civilisational identity as a potent political, moral and psychological category that is an aspect of a more multi-faceted challenge to the hegemonic, almost monopolistic, dominance of statist identity bound up with the role of the state in the modem world order system. In fairness to Huntington, his starting-point is similarly conceptual, asserting that, for the long cycles of human experience, the significant unit of collective identity was something resembling what we now call a civilisation rather than that which we label a state, the latter enjoying prominence only in recent centuries. Huntington, along with many others, sees the state as being in a waning phase, but unlike these commentators, he believes the defining emergent reality is not 'the global village', or more dynamically, 'globalisation', but rather inter-civilisational reality.' For Huntington, this reemergence of civilisational identity implies, above all, a reconfiguration of geopolitical patterns of conflict, which in its essence will result in a new world order framework. My own view is less pronounced, although also questioning the intellectual viability of statist conceptions of world order, given the significance of global market forces and non-state political actors in the contemporary historical situation. I believe that the various dimensions of globalisation, especially the economic and cultural dimensions, are of defining importance with regard to superseding a world order system based upon the interaction of sovereign states. Nevertheless I agree with Huntington to this extent: that