In 1992 Samuel P. Huntington held a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, where he explained the theory and the concept of “Clash of Civilization”. Later he elaborated the theory in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, that after the Cold War and with the disillusionment of ideologies that had characterized the 1900s so strongly, promising utopia, but with catastrophic consequences in the first and second world war. Because of the disillusionment, new conflicts would rather be between different civilizations with different religious and cultural values between the different civilizations of the planet, for example:
-The West, Capitalistic, Democratic, Protestant Europe and USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
-Orthodox, Socialist East-Europe and Russia.
-The Islamic, Nationalistic, Middle-East, North Africa.
Among others.
He pointed in particular to Islam as a source of renewed conflict contrasted with the West’s universality, a clear message was said that now ought everyone else follow the western culture too, after the US was left as the world’s superpower after the cold war. Particularly involved in the Middle East to impose this universality, mainly because of the hydrocarbon interests and since the Islamic civilization is specially hostile against the west and it stubbornly resist any change to the western civilization, when most of the world had already accepted the universality of the West, with both Democracy to let the people decide how the country were to be run (to a certain degree) and Civil Rights and Human Rights, that guaranteed that any leader of a Democratic country couldn’t became a tyrant, but had severe limits in how to lead the people. The old colonial term of “civilized”, seem now to be “democracy”. This new form of civilizing and the colonization of the Middle east, go even with Orwellian doublespeak like spreading “Freedom” and “Libery”, to make everything better for the less developed people, such as giving them good leaders that follow this universalism, weapons to defeat the barbarians, the democratic” enemies and then economic rewards.
Historically in Europe the Muslim forces from Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) who originally came so far to invade Europe got defeated by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, France, and in the battle for Vienna, Austria where Ottomans also lost in the battle betweent The Holy Roman Empire, being strained and lacking reinforcements, which eventually received assistance from the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, which drove back the invasion. After this The Ottoman Empire lost more and more of it’s former power over the next century, losing battle after battle. Spain was conquered in the Reconquista (“reconquest”) If not for these historic battles, there might not been a West to challenge the new Civilization that emerged from the Arab Peninsula after the birth of the prophet Muhammad.
Statistically speaking, Huntington pointed out that a vast majority of the conflict areas in the world were between Muslims and others.
After September 11th 2001, it seemed that his calculations struck true, where a massive attack on American symbols for military power and economy left around 3,000 dead, and this led to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, “The War on Terror” where the attempt to defeat Al-Qaeda, left with a total and sudden withdrawal one silent night by the last troops. This left a vacuum which was quickly filled by the increasingly brutal terrorist organizations, like today’s ISIS, trying to reawaken the old Caliphate, which after WW1, with the total victory over the Ottoman Empire and the partitioning of the Levant and Mesopotamia, was the end of what for around a thousand years had expanded from Saudi Arabia and defeated the Byzantine empire, being an enormous empire stretching from India to Spain.
At the bottom of all this is the historical figures of Jesus and Muhammad and how these two humans formed two an totally different cultures and values between The West and Muslim countries on the other side, with over a billion people on either side who have radically different Judeo-Christian values. In particular, the US has distinguished itself as the main enemy of the Muslim world, with its massive population of Christian fundamentalists unlike Europe, alongside Israel and Western-Europe. After two millennia of Christendom, Europe is heavily influenced, both in law and customs by the Christian teachings and values, even if it now also have strong Atheism in most countries, spread with the new scientific discoveries that have been made to cast shadows of the once unquestionable bible, but still is and will for the foreseeable future have the heritage of Christianity as values and a culture worth to go to war and kill and die for.
The Clash of Civilizations 