The book has been criticized by various academic writers, who have empirically, historically, logically, or ideologically challenged its claims. Political scientist
Paul Musgrave writes that
Clash of Civilization "enjoys great cachet among the sort of policymaker who enjoys name-dropping
Sun Tzu, but few specialists in international relations rely on it or even cite it approvingly. Bluntly,
Clash has not proven to be a useful or accurate guide to understanding the world." Other books, written for the general public, similarly challenge Huntington's contentious claims. For example, in his work
Identity and Violence: The illusion of destiny, The Nobel Laureate
Amartya Sen advances several critiques of Huntington's main concept of an inevitable
Clash along civilizational lines. He argues that violence occurs when individuals see each other as having a singular affiliation (e.g.,
Hindu,
Muslim,
Christian), as opposed to multiple affiliations: e.g., Hindu, woman, housewife, mother, artist, daughter, member of a particular socio-economic class etc. In this sense, and to the detriment of civilization distinctiveness, it is argued that all of these dimensions can, and should be a source of a personal identity. Moreover, in an article explicitly referring to Huntington, the same scholar
Amartya Sen (1999) argues that "diversity is a feature of most cultures in the world. Western civilization is no exception. The practice of democracy that has won out in the modern West is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the
Enlightenment and the
Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last century or so. To read in this a historical commitment of the West—over the millennia—to democracy, and then to contrast it with non-Western traditions (treating each as monolithic) would be a great mistake." In his 2003 book
Terror and Liberalism,
Paul Berman argues that distinct cultural boundaries do not exist in the present day. He argues there is "no Islamic civilization nor a Western civilization", and that the evidence for a civilization clash is not convincing, especially when considering relationships such as that between the
United States and Saudi Arabia. In addition, he cites the fact that many Islamic extremists spent a significant amount of time living or studying in the Western world. According to Berman, conflict arises because of
philosophical beliefs various groups share (or do not share), regardless of cultural or religious identity.
Timothy Garton Ash objects to the "extreme cultural determinism... crude to the point of parody" of Huntington's idea that Catholic and Protestant Europe is headed for democracy, but that Orthodox Christian and Islamic Europe must accept dictatorship. The clash of civilizations has been criticized as promoting an ideologically
conservative attempt to maintain the
imperial gains from
Western colonialism.
Edward Said issued a response to Huntington's thesis in his 2001 article,
The Clash of Ignorance. Said argues that Huntington's categorization of the world's fixed civilizations "omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture". A longtime critic of the Huntingtonian paradigm, and an outspoken proponent of Arab issues, Said (2004) also argues that the clash of civilizations thesis is an example of "the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims" (p. 293).
Noam Chomsky has criticized the concept of the clash of civilizations as just being a new justification for the
United States "for any atrocities that they wanted to carry out", which was required after the
Cold War as the
Soviet Union was no longer a viable threat. In
21 Lessons for the 21st Century,
Yuval Noah Harari called the clash of civilizations a misleading thesis. He wrote that
Islamic fundamentalism is more of a threat to a
global civilization, rather than a confrontation with the West. He also argued that talking about civilizations using analogies from evolutionary biology is wrong.
Nathan J. Robinson criticizes Huntington's thesis as inconsistent. He notes that according to Huntington, "
Spanish-speaking Catholic-majority
Spain is West, while Spanish-speaking Catholic-majority
Mexico is not part of Western civilization, and instead belongs with
Brazil as part of
Latin American civilization." Robinson concludes, "If you look at the map and think these divisions make sense, which you might, it is because what you are mostly seeing here is a map of prejudices. [Huntington] indeed shows how a lot of people think of the world, especially in America." The literary criticism podcast
If Books Could Kill raises the concern that Huntington may be seen as publishing
genocide apologia, uncritically repeating verbatim the assertions of
Serbian soldiers during the
Bosnian genocide that ethnic cleansing is necessary due to the high Muslim Albanian
birth rate. In his 1993 article, Huntington wrote that "If civilization is what counts … the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries". 29 years later, in 2022,
Russia invaded Ukraine.
Intermediate Region Huntington's geopolitical model, especially the structures for
North Africa and
Eurasia, is largely derived from the
Intermediate Region geopolitical model first formulated by
Dimitri Kitsikis and published in 1978. The Intermediate Region, which spans the
Adriatic Sea and the
Indus River, is neither Western nor Eastern (at least, with respect to the
Far East) but is considered distinct. Concerning this region, Huntington departs from Kitsikis contending that a civilizational fault line exists between the two dominant yet differing religions (
Eastern Orthodoxy and
Sunni Islam), hence a dynamic of external conflict. However, Kitsikis establishes an integrated civilization comprising these two peoples along with those belonging to the less dominant religions of
Shia Islam,
Alevism, and
Judaism. They have a set of mutual cultural, social, economic and political views and norms which radically differ from those in the West and the Far East. In the Intermediate Region, therefore, one cannot speak of a civilizational clash or external conflict, but rather an internal conflict, not for cultural domination, but for political succession. This has been successfully demonstrated by documenting the
rise of Christianity from the
Hellenized Roman Empire, the rise of the
Islamic caliphates from the
Christianized Roman Empire and the rise of
Ottoman Empire from the Islamic caliphates and the Christianized Roman Empire.
Opposing concepts ,
reformist president of
Iran (in office 1997–2005), introduced the theory of
Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Huntington's theory. In recent years, the theory of
Dialogue Among Civilizations, a response to Huntington's
Clash of Civilizations, has become the center of some international attention. The concept was originally coined by Austrian philosopher
Hans Köchler in an essay on cultural identity (1972). In a letter to
UNESCO, Köchler had earlier proposed that the cultural organization of the United Nations should take up the issue of a "dialogue between different civilizations" (). In 2001,
Mohammad Khatami, then
Iranian president, introduced the concept at the global level. At his initiative, the
United Nations proclaimed the year 2001 as the "United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations". The
Alliance of Civilizations (AOC) initiative was proposed at the 59th
General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005 by the
Spanish Prime Minister,
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and co-sponsored by the
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The initiative is intended to galvanize collective action across diverse societies to combat
extremism, to overcome cultural and social barriers between mainly the
Western and predominantly
Muslim worlds, and to reduce the tensions and polarization between societies which differ in religious and cultural values. ==See also==