DUBAI, 13 November — A US academic who coined the term "clash of civilizations" said yesterday the United States could help avoid a potentially polarizing struggle between the West and Islam by distancing itself from its close ally Israel.
Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, in a speech at a conference in Dubai, said Muslim states could also contribute by removing anti-Western hostility from school teaching courses and understanding that repressive government bred extremism. The recommendations were among several he proposed to reduce the likelihood of a widespread conflict between Western and Muslim countries in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which the United States has blamed on Osama Bin Laden. "If Osama Bin Laden can rally people to his cause, this war will indeed become a clash of civilizations," Huntington said.
The term entered the popular lexicon in the mid-1990s as the title of a book by Huntington, who asserted that a declining Western culture was being challenged by a rising China and a rising Islam. Those conclusions were played down by many influential American thinkers, but not all.
Bin Laden has sworn that the United States will never be safe as long as the Palestinians continue to be slaughtered by Israelis who are blindly supported by the United States.
US culture not universal
US President George W. Bush has been at pains to say the US war on terrorism is not a war on Islam and to explain that killing innocent civilians perverts the teachings of the Qur’an.
On Monday, speaking at a conference on the future of Dubai, one of seven emirates comprising the United Arab Emirates, Huntington said the West could act in four areas to reduce the likelihood of a battle between Islam and the West.
Firstly, the United States needed to abandon the assumption that its culture was universal and that other peoples wanted to be like Americans.
Secondly, the United States, which by some counts conducted military operations in 16 foreign countries in the 1980s and 1990s, should limit foreign military operations to situations in which its vital interest were engaged, he said.
Thirdly: "The United States needs to distance itself from Israel," he said. Washington should involve itself in efforts to bring about a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capital shared with the Israelis and should help efforts to secure the removal of Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. "This will be an extremely difficult undertaking," he said. He added later in answer to a question: "There are Muslim people in Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir ruled by non-Muslim governments — in other words, in the case in the Palestinians, by the Israelis — and it would be highly desirable for these Muslim people to exercise self-determination."
Fourthly, the West could promote economic development in poor Muslim countries in several ways including free trade pacts such as that between the United States and Jordan.
High-tech hub
Muslim countries could contribute by choosing modernization over Islamic extremism and by realizing that repressive and undemocratic governments often resulted in extremist opposition.
"A choice needs to be made between Al- Qaeda and Dubai," he said, referring to Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization and Dubai’s role as hi-tech trade hub.
"The Arab world, and Dubai, can modernize without losing their traditional values," he said.
