Review

78 The Glory of Islam will remain ……………..

Thoughts on Economics 77

Thoughts on Economics

Vol. 24, No. 01

The Glory of Islam will remain Unblemished in the Future World despite the Clash of Civilizations

Sarwar Md. Saifullah Khaled*

“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects Tagut and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold, which never breaks” (Al Qur’an, 2:256). “He hath chosen you and hath not laid upon you in religion any hardship; it is the religion of your father Abraham. He hath named you Muslims, both before and in this (Revelation)” (Al Qur’an, 22:78).

[Abstract: The article deals with the future of the adherents of Islam tracing the faults of Communism as an ideology and the inadequacies of Christianity, the religion of a great majority of the world population. The probable conflict of civilizations arising out of the end of the cold war, ideological conflict between the West and the Soviets, including the causes of the clash of civilizations, and the future of the followers of Islam in the West are discussed along with citing some famous quotations of eminent non-Muslims in praise of Islam. The paper maintains that Islam will prevail as the only hope for mankind in the future.]

I. Introduction

Islam is a vast religion, boasting millions of adherents, spanning large areas of the globe, and encompassing more than fourteen centuries of history. Muslims are united in their belief in the one transcendent, immanent Allah of pure singularity. They hold Al Qur'an to be the literal word of Allah, eternally coexisting with Allah, and transmitted to all the prophets beginning with Adam, but only purely, undefiled, and completely to Hazrat Muhammad (sm), the Seal of the Prophets. Islam spread by proselytization, spiritual examples, and the beauty of its equality among humankind.

In its first six centuries, Islam was wracked by civil war, conquest, and preaching. Those first centuries also saw Islamic civilization in its full flower, highlighted by universities, philosophy, law, science, art, and literature. Political instability was no barrier to creativity. For its second six centuries, most of Islam was controlled by two highly centralized and dominant empires, the Ottoman and the Mughal.

For most of the last two centuries, Western secular forces, beginning with Napoleon, have progressively made incursions into the realm of Islam. Both the Ottoman and Mughal empires expired, and in the twentieth century virtually all Islamic lands came under Western rule. Those historic events triggered a wrenching self-examination within Islam, as various thinkers and movements sought to analyze the cause of Islam’s decline

and to define what it means to be Muslim. In the current wars, the United States is confronting the most extreme and politicized example of Muslim reaction because of its own mistakes in handling the Muslims world over, an example as extreme as to be alien to the great tradition of Islam.

(a) Islam in Flower: According to Islamic belief, Hazrat Muhammad (sm) received his call “to recite” around A.D. 610. He proclaimed that a god, Allah, previously worshipped as one of many pagan gods, was in fact the One God, the only God. His preaching incurred the enmity of the dominant tribe of Mecca of which he was a member. In 622 A.D., he accepted the invitation from a number of his converts to go to Medina, from where he conducted the war imposed upon him by the Meccans and rival tribes. Eventually, he was invited back to Mecca, where the whole city fell under his preaching. Islam then quickly spread throughout Arabia. Hazrat Muhammad (sm) died in 632 A.D.

A contest immediately ensued as to who should succeed him. The debate centered on whether a member of his tribe should be elected Caliph (successor) or whether Hazrat Muhammad (sm) wanted his successor to be from his familial line (that candidate was Hazrat Ali (r), the husband of Hazrat Muhammad’s (sm) daughter). Three Caliphs from Hazrat Muhammad (sm)’s tribe successively became Caliph until, finally, Hazrat Ali (r) was elected the fourth. But a struggle for leadership raged between the relatives of the assassinated third Caliph, Hazrat Uthmann (r), and Hazrat Ali (r). This was the great civil war that ultimately led to the split in Islam between the Sunnis and Shi’ites.

For the next three centuries the contest continued in one form or another. But alongside the political contest, an ideological rivalry began, as Muslims debated the essentials of their faith. In the midst of this debate, the great accomplishments of Islamic civilization came to fruition, including institutional toleration for other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity. Five of Islam’s ideological strains of this era are the following.

(i) Mutazilites: One tradition and theological school was that of the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous logic. The Mutazilites were readers of Greek philosophy and akin to the Scholastics of Medieval Europe. They believed that, although reason’s fallibility required Al Qur’an, reason could help one to attain significant knowledge about what was good, providing a sure way of attaining communion and nearness to Allah. They contested the idea that Al Qur’an existed from all eternity and instead asserted that it was a creation of Allah. Because of the weakness of the human will, revelation was necessary to confirm to humankind what was truly good and to provide them with rules of behaviour that unaided reason could not apprehend. Nonetheless, reason directs the understanding of revelation. Allah would not command that which would be absurd or unreasonable. Today, the Mutazilites are reflected in many Islamic reformers conducive to the dynamism of Islam relevant to the contemporary world.

(ii) Murjites: A second group was called the Murjites, who had a simple and straightforward philosophy. They believed that the political leadership of Islam was not worth a war, that peace was incumbent upon all Muslims, that there was no racial or clerical hierarchy in Islam but, rather, that all Muslims were equal. No person, no matter the race or class, had any more or less a right to obtain entrance to Heaven than did anyone else. It is because of the Murjite influence that Islam has a strong egalitarian character. Today, the legacy of the Murjites is seen in the traditional lives of many Muslims: love and brotherhood, respect for equality, religious devotions to attain righteousness, and the benevolence of Allah.

(iii) Shari'ats - the legalists: The third tradition was that of the legalists, who have become a dominant voice in Sunni Islam. They were the ones who eventually formed the Shari’a, the sacred law of Islam, which were over five hundred years more advanced than English common law, particularly in terms of commercial and property law and partnerships and inheritances. Their rules on commercial law, partnerships, agency, and succession were some of the most sophisticated of any legal system of its day and afterwards. Where the rules of the Shari’a got in the way of state governance, however, such as in the criminal law, the authorities simply removed the qadi – the religious judge who enforced the provisions of the Shari’a – from jurisdiction and set up their own state courts. That is why the criminal portions of the Shari’a remained somewhat undeveloped. Today the legalists are represented more or less by the fundamentalists a term used by the westerners, who think that some or all of the Shari’a should be the life and constitution of Islam.

(iv) Kharijites: The fourth tradition was called the Kharijites. Their view was that Allah would reveal the true leader of Islam on the battlefield and that any Muslim who did not obey the religion exactly as the Kharajites understood it was an apostate that can and should be punished. They made war on every other Muslim who did not follow their exact version of Islam. At one point, they even assassinated Hazrat Ali (r), the fourth Caliph. Their objective was to exterminate any competing version of Islam. It took the rest of Islam two centuries to put down that heresy.

(v) Sufism: The fifth tradition—called Sufism—came two centuries later in reaction to the dominant legalists. The Sufis were mystics, believing that they could gain oneness with Allah through the inner life and moral purification. The Sufi tradition and the legalistic tradition have frequently been in severe tension over the centuries.

(b) Islamic Civilization in Decline? It may seem strange to say that Islam was in decline during the period of the Ottoman Empire when its armies reached the gates of Vienna or when the Mughals dominated the Great Subcontinent of India. Yet even though the Ottomans reunified much of Islam following the disastrous Mongol destruction of the thirteenth century, Islamic culture as a whole became moribund, particularly when contrasted with the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance of the West. In Islam, the dominant intellectual elements were the Ulema, the legal and religious scholars, who became, in fact, the court party of the empire. Self-perpetuating, the Ulema constituted a class of partisans of a rigidified Shari’a. The law, which had been a liberating and creative element of Islamic civilization in its first three centuries, became a weight allied with despotic leadership.

In reaction to the dry legalism of the Ulema, the Sufis offered a spiritual alternative. Thus, during the period when independent scientific and philosophical enquiry was discouraged, the mystical element of the religion could not be contained, and it flourished. Sufi orders and devotions spread throughout the Muslim world.

(c) Islam in Disarray: Beginning in the late eighteenth century, reactions to the corruption and, later, to the decline of the Islamic empires grew apace. Two forms of Muslim reaction argued that the Islamic world had strayed from its origins. One group believed that the empire had tolerated Sufi mysticism too much. They held that the empire had not been legalistic enough. This group sought to impose the details of the Shari’a in its entire rigor, as codified some centuries previously. They were what are now termed the fundamentalists by the westerners. One of the most important of the early fundamentalists was Muhammad ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab, who railed against Sufi devotions. Allied with the Saud faction, Wahhabism eventually established one of the most strict and intolerant versions of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula.

Another group of thinkers, coming to prominence in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, believed that the Ulema were part of the problem. Many believed that Islam in its creative era, free of the legalism that later concretized around the religion, was what should be revivified. They held that the law should be thought anew, leapfrogging past the later codifications and finding its source in Al Qur’an and in those actions of Hazrat Muhammad (sm) (the traditions of the Prophet (sm)) that could be validated. These reformers included men such as Muhammad Abduh of Egypt and Muhammad Iqbal of India who dreamed of Pakistan an abode for the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent.

A third group, small in number, accepted the post-Enlightenment West. As in the West, they span a variety of positions, including Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Liberalism, and Capitalism.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the Islamic world was divided into separate modern states that were part of the contemporary international order. Most states followed the practice of Islamic rulers in the past by limiting the extent to which Islamic law ruled the society. Even today, most Islamic states are ruled by Western forms of law with some Islamic elements intermixed.

Beginning in the 1920s much of the Islamic revival was politicized into a new phenomenon: Islamist extremism. Influenced by modern Western notions of state power and of the force of political ideology, thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb of Egypt held that the Islamic world had fallen into a state of pre-Islamic “ignorance” or worse, of apostasy. Consequently, a vanguard of true believers was necessary to take power and to ideologically attack those leaders that had fallen away from Islam, no matter how much they claimed to be Muslims. Although the Satanic West was proclaimed the enemy, their true objectives were to change Islam in its inherent dynamic ideological force.

The article is organized as follows: Section II describes the faults of Communism, an ideology that stands against Islam, Section III describes the inadequacies of Christianity, a religion followed by a great majority of the world population, Section IV deals in the probable conflict of civilizations arising out of the end of the ideological conflict between the West and the Soviets in Russia, Section V discusses the causes of the clash of civilizations and criticism, VI is a discussion on the future of the followers of Islam in the West, Section VII provides a few quotations of some eminent non-Muslims in praise of Islam, and Section VIII Concludes.

Section II –The fault with Communism

Bertrand Russell writes, “In relation to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (1) Are its theoretical tenets true? (2) Is its practical policy likely to increase human happiness? For my part, I think the theoretical tenets of communism are false, and I think its practical maxims are such as to produce an immeasurable increase of human misery” (“Why I am Not a Communist”).

The theoretical doctrines of communism are for the most part derived from Marx. Objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddle-headed; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under capitalism, is arrived at (a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus’s doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate; and (b) by applying Ricardo’s theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles. He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners. Marx’s doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago. His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere myth. His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process.

Marx’s doctrine was bad enough, but the developments which it underwent under Lenin and Stalin made it much worse. Marx had taught that there would be a revolutionary transitional period following the victory of the proletariat in a civil war and that during this period the proletariat, in accordance with the usual practice after a civil war, would deprive its vanquished enemies of political power. This period was to be that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It should not be forgotten that in Marx’s prophetic vision the victory of the proletariat was to come after it had grown to be the vast majority of the population. The dictatorship of the proletariat therefore as conceived by Marx was not essentially anti-democratic. In the Russia of 1917, however, the proletariat was a small percentage of the population, the great majority being peasants. It was decreed that the Bolshevik party was the class-conscious part of the proletariat, and that a small committee of its leaders was the class-conscious part of the Bolshevik party. The dictatorship of the proletariat thus came to be the dictatorship of a small committee, and ultimately of one man - Josef Stalin. As the sole class-conscious proletarian, Stalin condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation and millions of others to forced labour in concentration camps. Russell comments that “I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin” (“Why I am Not a Communist”).

Russell proceeds, “I have always disagreed with Marx. My first hostile criticism of him was published in 1896. But my objections to modern Communism go deeper than my objections to Marx. It is the abandonment of democracy that I find particularly disastrous. A minority resting its powers upon the activities of secret police is bound to be cruel, oppressive and obscurantist” (“Why I am Not a Communist”).

Before the fall of the Soviets there were signs that in course of time the Russian régime will become more liberal. But, although this was possible, it was very far from certain. In the meantime, all those who valued not only art and science but a sufficiency of bread and freedom from the fear that a careless word by their children to a schoolteacher might condemn them to forced labour in a Siberian wilderness, must do what lies in their power to preserve in their own countries a less servile and more prosperous manner of life.

During the days of the Soviets there were those who, oppressed by the evils of communism, were led to the conclusion that the only effective way to combat these evils was by means of a world war. But this was a mistake. The way to combat communism was not war. What was needed was a diminution of the grounds for discontent in the less prosperous parts of the non-communist world. In most of the countries of Asia, there is abject poverty which the West ought to alleviate as far as it lies in its power to do so. There is also a great bitterness which was caused by the centuries of European insolent domination in Asia. This ought to be dealt with by a combination of patient tact with dramatic announcements renouncing such relics of White domination as survive in Asia. Communism is a doctrine bred of poverty, hatred and strife. Its spread can only be arrested by diminishing the area of poverty and hatred. As Al Qur’an reveals: “O you who believe! Spend out of (the bounties for the needy) We have provided for you, before the day comes when no bargaining (will avail), nor friendship nor intercession” (Al Qur’an, 2:254).

Section III – Inadequacies of Christianity

(a) The Character of Christ: Bertrand Russell writes, “I want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said, “Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”. That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept.

“Then there is another point which I consider excellent. You will remember that Christ said, “Judge not lest ye be judged”. That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did.

“Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor”. That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practiced. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian” (“Why I Am Not A Christian”). But Al Qur’an reveals: “And let not thy hand be not chained to thy neck nor open it with a complete opening, lest thou sit down rebuked, denuded” (Al Qur’ân, 17:29).

(b) Defects in Christ's Teaching narrated in the Gospel: Some maintain that having granted the excellence of these maxims, one may come to certain points in which one does not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels. One is concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. Then he says, His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. Russell maintains that “I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not as wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise” (“Why I Am Not A Christian”). But the teaching of Islam is as against avarice as a Tradition reads: “Fight on earth such that you are to live here for eternity, and practice for the hereafter such that you are to die tomorrow” (Haikal, 2001, P.304).

(c) The Emotional Factor: Russell told a story, “As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous.

“That is the idea – that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of this religion.

“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. It may be said quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world” (“Why I Am Not A Christian”).

There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. “What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy”. Al Qur’an reads: “He hath chosen you and hath not laid upon you in religion any hardship” (Al Qur’an, 22:78)

(d) What We Must Do: We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world – its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not as good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men who revised and distorted the revelation of Allah. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence and intellect. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

These are the actual teachings of Allah when He says: “Allah changeth not the condition of a folk until they (first) change that which is in their hearts” (Al Qur’ân, 13:11). Russell’s contentions are the reflections of the distortions of the true religion in later ages made by the additions and subtractions to the revelations of Allah in the Gospels by the Christian Saints that Jesus Christ was instructed to preach among the people of his age.

Section IV – Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis on the Clash of Civilizations

The Clash of Civilizations: The Clash of Civilizations is a theory that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. It was proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled “The Clash of Civilizations?”, in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

The phrase itself was earlier used by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled “The Roots of Muslim Rage”. Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations. This expression derives from clash of cultures, already used during the colonial period and the Belle Époque.

(a) Overview: Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy, and capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the ‘end of history’ in a Hegelian sense. The identification of Western civilization with the Western Christianity (Catholic-Protestant) was not Huntington’s original idea; it was rather the traditional Western viewpoint and subdivision before the Cold War era.

Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.

In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington writes: “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”. In the end of the article, he writes: “This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like”.

In addition, the clash of civilizations, for Huntington, represents a development of history. In the old time, the history of international system was mainly about the struggles between monarchs, nations and ideologies. Those conflicts were primarily seen within Western civilization. But after the end of the cold war, world politics had moved into a new aspect in which non-Western civilizations were no more the exploited recipients of Western civilization but became another important actor joining the West to shape and move the world history.

(b) Major civilizations according to Huntington:Huntington divided the world into “major civilizations” in his thesis as such: Western civilization, comprising the United States and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia and Oceania. Whether Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union are included, or are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an important future consideration for those regions, according to Huntington.

Latin America includes Central America, South America (excluding Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana), Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. May be Latin America is considered a part of Western civilization, though it has slightly distinct social and political structures from Europe, the United States and Canada. Many people of the Southern Cone, however, regard themselves as full members of the Western civilization.

The Orthodox world of the former Soviet Union is the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania. Countries with non-Orthodox majority are usually excluded (Shia Muslim Azerbaijan, Sunni Muslim Albania and most of Central Asia, Roman Catholic Slovenia and Croatia, Protestant Baltic states), but Armenia (where Armenian Apostolic Church is a part of Oriental Orthodoxy rather than Eastern Orthodox Church) is included.

The Eastern world is the mix of the Buddhist, Chinese, Hindu, and Japonica civilizations. The Buddhist areas of Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are identified as separate from other civilizations, but Huntington believes that they do not constitute a major civilization in the sense of international affairs. The Sinic civilization of China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam also includes the Chinese Diasporas, especially in relation to Southeast Asia. Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Bhutan and Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global Indian Diasporas and Japan, is considered a hybrid of Chinese civilization and older Altaic patterns.

The Muslim world comprises of the Greater Middle East (excluding Armenia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta and South Sudan), northern West Africa, Albania, Bangladesh, Brunei, Comoros, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Maldives.

The civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa located in Southern Africa, Middle Africa (excluding Chad), East Africa (excluding Ethiopia, Comoros, Kenya, Mauritius, and Tanzania), Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is considered as a possible 8th civilization by Huntington.

Instead of belonging to one of the “major” civilizations, Ethiopia and Haiti are labeled as “Lone” countries. Israel could be considered a unique state with its own civilization, Huntington writes, but one which is extremely similar to the West. Huntington also believes that the Anglophone Caribbean, former British colonies in the Caribbean, constitutes a distinct entity.

There are also others which are considered “cleft countries” because they contain very large groups of people identified with separate civilizations. Examples include India (“cleft” between its Hindu majority and large Muslim minority), Ukraine (“cleft” between its Eastern Rite Catholic-dominated western section and its Orthodox-dominated east), France (“cleft” between Latin America, in the case of French Guiana; and the West), Benin, Chad, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Togo (all “cleft” between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa), Guyana and Suriname (“cleft” between Hindu and Sub-Saharan African), China (“cleft” between Sinic, Buddhist, in the case of Tibet; and the West, in the case of Hong Kong and Macau), and the Philippines (“cleft” between Islam, in the case of Mindanao; Sinic, and the West). Sudan was also included as “cleft” between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa; this division became a formal split in July 2011 following an overwhelming vote for independence by South Sudan in a January 2011 referendum.

(c) Huntington's thesis of civilization clash: Russia and India are what Huntington terms ‘swing civilizations’ and may favour either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but –according to Huntington – cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a “Sino-Islamic connection” is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other states to augment its international position.

Huntington also argues that civilization conflicts are “particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims”, identifying the “bloody borders” between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations. This conflict dates as far back as the initial thrust of Islam into Europe, its eventual expulsion in the Iberian reconquest and the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on Eastern Europe and Vienna. Huntington also believes that some of the factors contributing to this conflict are that both Christianity (which has influenced Western civilization) and Islam are: Missionary religions, seeking conversion of others.

Universal, “all-or-nothing” religions, both believe that only their faith is the correct one, and that their values and beliefs represent the goals of existence and purpose in human existence. Irreligious people who violate the base principles of those religions are perceived to be furthering their own pointless aims, which lead to violent interactions.

More recent factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism – that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values – that infuriate Islamic followers. All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations. The political party Hizb ut-Tahrir also reiterates Huntington’s views in their published book, The Inevitability of Clash of Civilization.

(d) Why Civilizations will Clash: Huntington offers six main explanations for why civilizations will clash: (i) Differences among civilizations are too basic in that civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion. These fundamental differences are the product of centuries, so they will not soon disappear. (ii) The world is becoming a smaller place. As a result, the interactions across the world are increasing, and they intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations. (iii) Due to the economic modernization and social change, people are separated from longstanding local identities. Religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations. (iv) The growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations. A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Western countries that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways. (v) Cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. (vi) Economic regionalism is increasing. Successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness. Economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilization

(e) The West versus the Rest: Huntington suggests that in the future the central axis of world politics tends to be the conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations the conflict between “the West and the Rest”. Huntington believes that the increasing power of non-Western civilizations in international society will make the West begin to develop a better understanding of the cultural fundamentals underlying other civilizations. Therefore, Western civilization will cease to be regarded as “universal” but different civilizations will learn to coexist and join to shape the future world.

(f) Core state and fault line conflicts: In Huntington’s view, inter-civilizational conflict manifests itself in two forms: fault line conflicts and core state conflicts. (i) Fault line conflicts are on a local level and occur between adjacent states belonging to different civilizations or within states that are home to populations from different civilizations. (ii) Core state conflicts are on a global level between the major states of different civilizations. Core state conflicts can arise out of fault line conflicts when core states become involved.

These conflicts may result from a number of causes, such as: relative influence or power (military or economic), discrimination against people from a different civilization, intervention to protect kinsmen in a different civilization, or different values and culture, particularly when one civilization attempts to impose its values on people of a different civilization. Al Qur’an beautifully describes the causes of such conflicts as: “Never will the Jews or Christians be satisfied with you unless you follow their religion” (Al Qur’an, 2:120)

Section V – Causes of the Clash of Civilizations and Criticism

Critics of Huntington’s ideas often extend their criticisms to traditional cultures and internal reformers who wish to modernize without adopting the values and attitudes of Western culture. These critics sometimes claim that to modernize is necessarily to become westernized to a very large extent.

In reply, those who consider the Clash of Civilizations thesis accurate often point to the example of Japan, claiming that it is not a Western state at its core. They argue that it adopted much Western technology (also inventing technology of its own in recent times), parliamentary democracy, and free enterprise, but has remained culturally very distinct from the West, particularly in its conceptions of society as strictly hierarchical. Contradictory evidence on a more granular scale in turn comes from empirical evidence that greater exposure to factories, schools and urban living is associated with more ‘modern’ attitudes to rationality, individual choice and responsibility.

China is also cited by some as a rising non-Western economy. Many also point out the East Asian Tigers or neighboring states as having adapted western economics, while maintaining traditional or authoritarian social government. Perhaps the ultimate example of non-Western modernization is Russia, the core state of the Orthodox civilization. The variant of this argument that uses Russia as an example relies on the acceptance of a unique non-Western civilization headed by an Orthodox state such as Russia or perhaps an Eastern European country. Huntington argues that Russia is primarily a non-Western state although he seems to agree that it shares a considerable amount of cultural ancestry with the modern West. Russia was one of the great powers during World War I. It also happened to be a non-Western power.

According to Huntington, the West is distinguished from Orthodox Christian countries by the experience of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Enlightenment, overseas colonialism rather than contiguous expansion and colonialism, and a recent re-infusion of Classical culture through Rome rather than through the continuous trajectory of the Byzantine Empire. The differences among the modern Slavic states can still be seen today. This issue is also linked to the “universalizing factor” exhibited in some civilizations.

Huntington refers to countries that are seeking to affiliate with another civilization as “torn countries”. Turkey, whose political leadership has systematically tried to westernize the country since the 1920s, is an example. Turkey’s history, culture, and traditions are derived from Islamic civilization, but Turkey’s elite, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who took power as first President of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, imposed western institutions and dress, embraced the Latin alphabet, joined NATO, and is seeking to join the European Union. Mexico and Russia are also considered to be torn by Huntington. He also gives the example of Australia as a country torn between its Western civilization heritage and its growing economic engagement with Asia.

According to Huntington, a torn country must meet three requirements to redefine its civilization identity. First, its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join must accept the country. The book claims that to date no torn country has successfully redefined its civilization identity, this mostly due to the elites of the ‘host’ civilization refusing to accept the torn country, though if Turkey gained membership of the European Union it has been noted that many of its people would support Westernization. If this were to happen it would be the first to redefine its civilization identity.

(i) Criticism: Huntington has fallen under the stern critique of various academic writers, who have empirically, historically, logically, or ideologically challenged his claims (Fox, 2005; Mungiu Pippidi & Mindruta, 2002; Henderson & Tucker, 2001; Russett, Oneal, & Cox, 2000). In an article explicitly referring to Huntington, 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” (Sen, A. 1999, P.16).

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 neither “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 and/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.

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, Edward Said (2004) also argue 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” (Said, E., 2004, P.293). Here we may cite two Al Qur’anic ayahs which read: “If Allah had so willed, He would have made you one community, but (His Plan is) to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues” (Al Qur’an, 5:48) and “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other)”(Al Qur’an, 49:13). 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.

(ii) Opposing concepts: Mohammad Khatami, 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, which was introduced by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, was the basis for United Nations’ resolution to name the year 2001 as the 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 President of the Spanish Government, 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.

(iii) The 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 civilization fault line exists between the two dominant yet differing religions (Orthodox Christianity 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 Shiite 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 civilization 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 rule from the Islamic Caliphates and the Christianized Roman Empire.

Section VI – Future of Followers of Islam in the West

(A). Future of Adherents of Islam in Britain: Islam is on track to become the dominant religion in Britain within the next generation, according to new census data published by the British government. The numbers show that although Christianity is still the main religion in Britain – over 50% of the population describe themselves as such – nearly half of all Christians in Britain are over the age of 50, and, for the first time ever, fewer than half under the age of 25 describe themselves as Christian. By contrast, the number of people under 25 who describe themselves as Muslim has doubled over the past ten years: one in ten under the age of 25 are Muslim, up from one in 20 in 2001.

If current trends continue – a Muslim population boom, combined with an aging Christian demographic and the increasing secularization of British natives – Islam is set to overtake Christianity in Britain within the next 20 years, according to demographers. A new report published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on May 16 offers additional analyses of the 2011 census data previously published in December 2012. In the 2011 Census, Christianity was still the largest religious group in England and Wales with 33.2 million people (59% of the population). The second largest religious group was Islam with 2.7 million people (5% of the population). The proportion of people who reported that they did not have a religion reached 14.1 million people id est. a quarter of the population (25%).

Although the overall population of England and Wales grew by 3.7 million between 2001 and 2011 to reach 56.1 million, in 2011, there were 4.1 million fewer people who reported being Christian (from 72% to 59% of the population). By contrast, 1.2 million more people reported being Muslim (from 3% to 5%), and 6.4 million more people reported no religion (from 15% to 25%). The new report, however, shows that the number of British Christians is actually falling at a far faster rate than previously thought. The earlier analysis of the statistics showed a roughly 15% decline in the number of Christians over the past decade, but the ONS found that this figure had been artificially influenced by the recent arrival of Christian immigrants from countries such as Nigeria and Poland.

According to the new report, the number of white British Christians actually fell by 5.8 million people between 2001 and 2011; this decline was masked by an increase in the number of Christians not born in Britain during that same period, but who were there due to immigration. In the 2011 Census, Christians had the oldest age profile of the main religious groups. Over one in five Christians (22%) were aged 65 and over, and nearly one in two (43%) were aged 50 and over; only one quarter (25.5%) were under the age of 25. By contrast, Muslims had the youngest age profile of the main religious groups. Nearly half of Muslims (48%) were aged under 25 (1.3 million) and nine in ten (88%) were aged under 50 (2.4 million).

In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper, Fraser Watts, a Professor of theology at Cambridge University, said it was “entirely possible” that Christians could become a minority within the next decade. “It is still pretty striking”, he said, “and it is a worrying trend and confirms what anyone can observe – that in many churches the majority of the congregation are over 60”. David Coleman, a Professor of demography at the University of Oxford, said the findings showed that Christianity is declining with each generation. “Each large age group”, he said, “as time progresses, receives less inculcation into Christianity than its predecessor ten years earlier”. Coleman contrasts the decline of Christianity through the generations to what happens among Muslims. “We have a Muslim faith where most studies suggest adherence to Islam is not only transmitted through the generations but appears to get stronger”, he said. “Indeed, there seems to be some evidence that the second generation Muslims in Britain is more Muslim than their parents”.

If population trends continue, by the year 2050 Britain will be a majority Muslim nation. This projection is based on reasonably good data. Between 2004 and 2008, the Muslim population of the UK grew at an annual rate of 6.7%, making Muslims 4% of the population in 2008. Extrapolating from those figures would mean that the Muslim population in 2020 would be 8%, 15% in 2030, and 28% in 2040 and finally, in 2050, the Muslim population of the UK would exceed 50% of the total population.

These startling demographic facts have been available for some time. Not everyone agrees with these demographic figures. Population projection, some say, is not an exact science. Perhaps the Muslim birth rate will drop to European levels. But this seems to be wishful thinking. For years it was believed that Muslims would enter what is known as “demographic transition”, with European Muslim birth rates falling to native European levels. But that demographic transition has not happened. In Britain, for example, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities continue to have significantly higher birth rates than the national average, even after more than 50 years in the country. Over the short term (a few generations) demographic forecasting is as scientific as any social science can be. Britain and the rest of Europe are in native population decline and European Muslim birth rates are up. If that trend continues, then the projection of a majority Muslim population in Britain is sound. Even the highly respected economist and historian Niall Ferguson accepts the figures.

Many British people find it hard to believe their country could become majority Muslim. After all, it was never what they wanted so why, in a democracy, should it be happening? But we have had such disbelief before. Back in the 60s and 70s, many people scoffed at the notion that London could ever be majority non-white. But today it is. The fact is that the deathbed demography of native Britons has come up against increasing Muslim birth rates and the result is a classic Malthusian geometric increase in the Muslim population. As Malthus emphasized, populations increase geometrically, not arithmetically. Given two populations, one declining one increasing, within a few generations the geometric increase of one over the other can be substantial.

Why has the Muslim birth rate not fallen to native levels? Just as there may be consumerist-cultural reasons for the low birth rates of native Britons, there may be strong cultural reasons for higher Muslim birth rates. As the journalist Christopher Caldwell puts it: “Muslim culture is full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation. As the Hadith saying has it: ‘Marry, for I will outnumber peoples by you.’”

Population projections over the long term can be wrong. But for Britain, over the short term, whatever way you do the numbers, they all point in one direction: Britain will be a majority Muslim state by the year 2050.

(a) Is London's future Islamic?: Islam is London’s fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place.

For a start, Islam is not an alien religion to London. At the end of World War I the city sat at the heart of an Empire that had 160 million Muslim subjects, 80 million in India alone. London was the largest Islamic capital in the world. Forty years later and the end of the Empire, unrest and war and poverty in south Asia had led to mass immigration to the mother country and London became a Muslim capital in another sense.

According to the 2001 census there are 607,083 Muslims living in London (310,477 men and 296,606 women). The majority of Muslims live in the east of the city and, by 2012, the Muslim Council of Britain estimates that the Muslim population of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest and Hackney will be 250,000. There are plans afoot (though no formal application has yet been submitted) to build the UK’s biggest Mosque – capable of welcoming 40,000 worshippers – near the 2012 Olympic site, a move which has prompted predictable outrage from some quarters. Consequently, Muslim disillusionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high. But the Londoners think rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to London, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists; they should recognize both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.

(i) Public health: On the surface, Islamic health doesn’t look good: the 2001 census showed that 24% of Muslim women and 21% of Muslim men suffered long-term illness and disability. But these are factors of social conditions rather than religion. In fact, Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of super bugs in London’s hospitals. Alcohol is Haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people (Camden has 31.6 per 100,000 males), turning all the city’s pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you would avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.

(ii) Ecology: ‘The world is green and beautiful,’ said the Prophet Muhammad (sm) ‘and Allah has appointed you his guardian over it.’ The Islamic concept of Halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world and Hazrat Muhammad (sm) was one of the first ever environmentalists, advocating Hima – areas where wildlife and forestry are protected. So we could expect more public parks under Islam, but Halifa also applies to recycling: in 2006, 12,000 Muslims attended a series of sermons at the East London Mosque explaining the theological evidence for a link between behaving in an environmentally sustainable way and the Islamic faith.

(iii) Education: Presently, Muslim students perform less well than non-Muslim students. In inner London, 37% of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims have no qualifications (the figure for the general population of the same age and location is 25%). When it comes to university education the picture is equally gloomy: 16 to 24-year-old Muslims are half as likely to have degree level or above qualification than other inner London young people.

But Muslim children do better in their own faith schools than in the mainstream state sector. Muslim schools have their own distinct ethos. They use the children’s faith and heritage as primary motivators to provide the backdrop for their education and behaviour. If Islam became the dominant religion in London the same ethos could be applied to schooling across swathes of underprivileged and deprived areas of the city. This could have a revolutionary effect on educational achievement and, perhaps just as importantly, general levels of discipline and self-respect among London’s young people.

(iv) Food: Application of Halal (Arabic for ‘permissible’) dietary laws across London would free ‘us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food’, and the general adoption of a South Asian diet rich in fruit juice, rice and vegetables with occasional mutton or chicken would have a drastic effect on obesity, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders and associated public health problems. Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instills self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion. And Londoners would benefit philosophically and physically from even a short period when ‘we weren’t constantly ramming food into our mouths’.

(v) Inter-faith relations: In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews – with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud – would be protected as ‘peoples of the book’. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilized accommodation could be made among faith groups in London. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle, which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.

(vi) Arts: Some of the finest art in London is already Islamic. The Jameel Gallery at the V&A houses ‘ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the great days of the Islamic Caliphate of the eighth and ninth century’ up until the turn of the last century. Or take a free daily tour of the Addis Gallery of Islamic art (at the British Museum). London-based Nasser David Khalili, an Iranian-born Jew, has amassed what is considered to be the world’s largest private collection of Islamic art. Islamic influences have also flourished in other areas of the arts, with novelists, comedians (Birmingham-born Shazia Mirza was an instant hit on the London circuit), and music (from rappers Mecca to Medina on, to the less in-your-face Yusuf Islam).

(vii) Social justice: Each Muslim is obliged to pay Zakat, a welfare tax of 2.5% of annual income that is distributed to the poor and the needy. If the working population of London, 5.2 million, was predominantly Muslim this would produce approximately £3.2 billion each year. More importantly, everyone would be obliged to consider those Londoners who have not shared their good fortune. London would become a little less cruel.

(viii) Race relations: Under Islam all ethnicities are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim – it does not matter what colour you are.

(B) Future of the Followers of Islamic Faith in America: The best survey evidence offers only a limited and inconclusive portrait of America’s Muslim community. The Pew Research Center estimates that there are 2.75 million Muslims living in the United States, and that 63% were born outside of the country. Of this foreign-born slice of the Muslim population, 45% arrived in the United States after 1990 and 70% are naturalized U.S. citizens. This population is incredibly diverse. Roughly 13% of all U.S. Muslims are native-born African-Americans. Some U.S. Muslims are highly educated professionals leading integrated lives, while others are less-skilled workers earning poverty-level incomes in ethnic enclaves. According to Pew, 69% of U.S. Muslims claim that religion is an important part of their lives; 47% report attending worship services on a weekly basis. These numbers closely parallel the numbers for U.S. Christians. It is also true, however, that one-fifth of U.S. Muslims seldom or never attend worship services, a sure sign of secularization.

Another sign is that a large majority of U.S. Muslims appear to be comfortable with religious pluralism. Pew found that 56% of U.S. Muslims believe that many different religions can lead to eternal life while 35% believe that only Islam will get you there. Similarly, 57% of U.S. Muslims believe that there are many valid ways to interpret Islamic teachings, as opposed to 37% who maintain that only one interpretation is valid. Suffice it to say, the notion that many different religions are of equal value is not likely to be embraced by the religiously orthodox. Indeed, one possibility is that this more relaxed approach to the demands of religion represents a way station on the road to abandoning religion entirely.

Americans of all stripes are abandoning organized religion at a brisk pace. While less than a 10th of Americans born from 1928 to 1945 are religiously unaffiliated, the same is true of one-third of Americans born from 1990 to 1994, according to a Pew Research Center survey released late last year. This dynamic seems to apply to U.S. Muslims as much as it applies to U.S. Christians. Part of the reason could be that the hold of religious communities on American lives has grown more tenuous. It appears that mosques have not become the kernels of tight-knit communities, as the churches that were so central to immigrant life a century ago did.

Even if secularization does take hold, there is no reason to believe that religious extremism will fade away. Indeed, the opposite could come to pass, as a shrinking number of moderate Muslims leaves behind a more isolated core of orthodox Muslim believers who see themselves in conflict with an increasingly secular America. Even as the vast majority of U.S. Muslims integrate into U.S. cultural, political and economic institutions, some small minority might continue to find in Islam a convenient excuse for anti-American rhetoric and action. The Tsarnaev brothers (suspects of 2013 Boston Marathon bombings), after all, did not live in a hotbed of Islamic radicalism; they lived in Inman Square, a neighborhood that is best known for its large Portuguese-speaking population. Perhaps the brothers would have been less likely to embrace extremism had they been rooted in a stronger Muslim religious community, complete with stronger role models. Or perhaps we need to accept the fact that some irreducible number of people will commit vile, despicable crimes no matter what we as a society do to prevent them. Our best hope is that just as the terrorist violence committed by left-wing radicals in the 1960s and 1970s eventually burned out, Islamic radicalism will soon be an unhappy memory.

The future of the followers of Islam depends on the ending of the cycle of radicalization, which will lead to collective stability, spiritual renewal, and positive, respectful relations with the rest of the world’s faiths. Muslims continue to face the challenges of living where Islam is not the norm but only one of a number of competing claims in a vast market of religious wares. We need to address the issues facing the international and domestic Muslim community by helping Muslims understand both the international human rights framework and the American constitutional framework. Islam will overcome such challenges. Al Qur’an reads: “It is He Who hath sent His Messenger with Guidance and the Religion of Truth, to cause it to prevail over all religion, even if the Pagans may detest (it)” (Al Qur’an, 9:33).

Section VII – Eminent non-Muslims in praise of Islam

The following are some quotes in praise about Islam and its preacher Hazrat Muhammad (sm):

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad (saw) in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make it appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.” [Sir George Bernard Shaw in ‘The Genuine Islam’ Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936]

“Our use of phrase ‘The Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe... From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished…To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view.” [Bertrand Russell in ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948, p. 419]

“The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it....Islam are replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity.” [H.G. Wells.]

“…Science owes a great deal more to Arab culture (Islam), it owes its existence” [Robert Briffault in the “Making of Humanity”]

“I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe.” [John William Draper in the “Intellectual Development of Europe”]

“History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated” [De Lacy O’Leary in ‘Islam at the Crossroads,’ London, 1923]

“Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this term…and the dogma of unity of God has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur, a majesty, an invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam....A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men.” [Edward Montet, ‘La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans,’ Paris 1890. (Also in T.W. Arnold in ‘The Preaching of Islam,’ London 1913)]

Section VIII – Conclusion

Islam in its entirety has great dynamic values that may help it be acceptable to the people of the entire world and spread throughout the future world. Islam unlike other religions is beneficial to the entire human race in two respects: firstly, its contribution to the peaceful coexistence of human beings with dignity and honour; secondly, its teachings to humanity to lead such a beautiful life imbibed in it such that the human race will not only excel in this magnificent world but also in the hereafter.

The West maintains that a war against terrorism today is also a war to free Islamic civilization from the baleful actions of extremists and to give that area of the world a chance to experience liberty, for liberty is the only medium by which religion Islam can truly flourish. The West also maintains that liberty successfully defeated Nazism and Communism, far greater threats than Muslim extremism today. Germany, Russia, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Latin America all now embrace the good of liberty in some form or another. Islamic liberty has natural allies in the Muslim world.

The West has learned that intolerance and violence do not advance any religion in the true sense. The West maintains that it has too long connived with states that have appeased extremists within their borders. If they offer more than television shows and blue jeans to the Middle East and other Muslim countries, if they instead offer a genuine respect for religion and support those elements there that hunger for Islamic freedom, they shall find friends and allies throughout those regions.

Islam has in its history great traditions of tolerance, learning, and spirituality. We should all hope that Muslims can once again enjoy those marvelous fruits of their Abrahamic faith. Islamic liberty is the only sure way for that hope. Allah says: “He it is Who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion: and Allah sufficeth as a Witness” (Al Qur’ân, 48:28). As an echo to this message of Allah, George Bernard Shaw says: ‘In the prospective future all religions and faiths will lose their effectiveness but mankind will attain their path of salvation in the faith preached by Mohammad’ (Azad, 2008. P. 27). Let us all pray and hope so for the salvation of mankind here in this marvelous world and the hereafter.

Notes and References:

Translated Al Qur’anic verses are from ‘The Meaning of the Glorious Koran’ by Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthal, 12th Printing, published by the New American Library, New York and Toronto, and The Holy Qur’an, Transliteration in Roman Script with Original Arabic Text, English Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, published by Kitab Bhaban, New Delhi 2008. Al Qur’anic verse numbers are those of the original text. Other translations, wherever made from Bengali, and the words and fragments of sentences inserted within quotations between parentheses are the acts of the present author.

Notes:

1. Huntington was born on April 18, 1927, in New York City, the son of Dorothy Sanborn (née Phillips), a short-story writer, and Richard Thomas Huntington, a publisher of hotel trade journals. His grandfather was publisher John Sanborn Phillips. He graduated with distinction from Yale University at age 18, served in the U.S. Army, earned his Master's degree from the University of Chicago, and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University where he began teaching at age 23. He was a member of Harvard’s department of government from 1950 until he was denied tenure in 1959. From 1959 to 1962 he was an Associate Professor of government at Columbia University where he was also Deputy Director of The Institute for War and Peace Studies. Huntington was invited to return to Harvard with tenure in 1963 and remained there until his death. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel co-founded and co-edited Foreign Policy. Huntington stayed as co-editor until 1977. During 1977 and 1978, in the administration of Jimmy Carter, he was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. Huntington died on December 24, 2008, at age 81 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

References:

01. Azad, Professor Md. Ali Ershad Hosen. 2008. “Priya Nabir (s) Samaj Sangskar” (The Social Reforms of Dear Prophet (s)). The Daily Ittefaq, 56th Year, No.88. Friday, 21 March 2008.

02. Berman, Paul, 2003, Terror and Liberalism, WW Norton & Company.

03. Clash of Civilizations? Noam Chomsky.

04. Forte, David F., 2013, Islam, Past and Future, Available at

: http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-12-number-1/islam-past-and-future

05. Fox, J., 2005, Paradigm Lost: Huntington’s Unfulfilled Clash of Civilizations Prediction into the 21st Century, International Politics, 42, Pp.428-457.

06. Future of Islam, 2013, Available at: http://www.patheos.com/Topics/Future-of-World-Religions/Islam.html

07. Haikal, Dr. Muhammad Hossain. 2001. Mahanabi (sm) Jibon Charit (The life of Hazrat Muhammad(sm)).Translated into Bengali from Arabic by Moulana Abdul Awal, Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, Dhaka.

08. Henderson, E. A., et al., 2001, Clear and Present Strangers: The Clash of Civilizations and International Conflict, International Studies Quarterly, 45, Pp.317-338.

09. Hodges, Michael, 2013, Is London’s Future Islamic? Available at:

http://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/is-londons-future-islamic-2

10. Huntington, Samuel P., 2013, Clash of Civilizations, Available at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations

11. Is Islam the future for England, and Christianity the past? ,2013, Available at: http://boards.dailymail.co.uk/news-board-moderated/10256680-islam-future-england-christianity-past.html

12. Kern, Soeren, 2013, Britain's Islamic Future, Available at:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3735/britain-islamic-future

13. Kitsikis, Dimitri, 1978, A Comparative History of Greece and Turkey in the 20th Century, Athens, Hestia 1978.

14. Mungiu Pippidi et al., 2002, Was Huntington Right? Testing Cultural Legacies and the Civilization Border, International Politics, 39(2). Pp.193-213.

15. Quotes praising Islam by non-Muslims (37 posts), 2013, Available at:

http://pkpolitics.com/discuss/topic/quotes-praising-islam-by-non-muslims

16. Russell, Bertrand, 2013, "Why I am Not a Communist" , Available at:

http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/opiate/why.html

17. _____________, 2013, Why I Am Not A Christian, Available at:

http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

18. Russett, B. M., et al., 2000, “Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà Vu? Some Evidence”, Journal of Peace Research, 37:583-608.

19. Said, E. W., 2004, From Oslo to Iraq and Road Map, New York: Pantheon, 2004.

20. Salam, Reihan, 2013, Boston and the future of Islam in America, Available at:

U20http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/us-boston-islam-idUSBRE93L15130422

21. Sen, Amartya, 1999, “Democracy as a Universal Value”, Journal of Democracy, 10(3):3-17.

22. The Islamic future of Britain, 2013, Available at:

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3770/the_islamic_future_of_britai

*The author is a former Staff Economist, (1968-1970). Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Karachi, Pakistan. Former Professor of Economics and Vice-Principal of Comilla Women’s College, Comilla, Bangladesh.