The Clash of Civilizations
In 1993, Huntington Samuel, a political scientist, wrote an article titled The Clash of Civilizations. Based on the PBS documentary and Huntington’s article, I agree with the thesis that the United States has the right to protect its borders and control the flow of immigration, just like other nations. Besides, it is evident enough that feud that will develop among states would translate from the war over conflicting ideals and would as well into different intellectual battles. Substantially, this will be as a result of nations having similar cultural backgrounds joining together to fight other rival cultures. Also, religion would take part in a critical role in preventing the Western world, especially the U.S. and Islam would deem as one of the core issues and sources for more battle against the country. As a result, this would translate into anarchy arising and the nation being more unstable.
The divide between Western and Islam has been around since the beginning, according to Huntington’s article. In other cultures and civilizations, for example, the West was highly beneficial. However, it is clear that they have developed a strong cultural identity and that globalization has not sought to eradicate it apart from enhancing it. A clash between Islam and the West, two systems, can be seen as one of civilization’s conflicts. The West led by the U.S. strives to promote globalization, in which Islam seeks to combat the urge to replace the system.
Concerning the current debate on immigration in the United States, it is clear that Islam ought to form a state based on the authority of Allah in opposition to the rule of a constitution made by the constitution. Islam also demonstrates strong opposition to the design of secular governments based on West policy, which appears to be contrary to the Western perspective and way of thinking because Islam combines both policy and religion. Moreover, this leads to the assumption that Islamic forms are incompatible with Western ideas. The USA, like other nations, has got to protect its borders, because other countries have believed that the system is not fair, so as to allow modern Islamic elites to benefit from West-driven globalization and militant Islamists to think that elites are accepting a corrupt, ungodly and immoral system. Also, Foreign policies of the United States with regard to leadership in the Middle East have been hated amongst Islamic movements.
The split of the world be the United States can be argued by some nations considering being rich whereas others being poor. States that benefitted from capitalism deemed to battle with hatred from nations that never benefitted as much. Besides, these battles aligned the world into different types of nations. Individual leaders from different nations also play abig apart in the process of making decision even though there exist difference in the way both Christina and Muslims select their leaders. Nations such as the United States separate politics and religion whereas Muslim nations favor their leaders to be selected religiously. The United States is still being fought largely by the Muslim nations as choosing leaders on the basis of religion have declined since the rise of western policies. Also, this has been enhanced by monetary up rise and increased education which has pushed nations towards the opposite direction of education of religious leaders.
Since most battles tend to use identity, religion and culture as a force of mobilizing the society, this brings to the conclusion that the United States should use military power to protect its borders and as well control of immigration even though this is critiqued by some individuals as to be a driving force of obtaining new territories and a reason as to why most battles take place. According to Huntington’s article, it is also clear that future wars may result due to policy makers, interest of powers in different regions, scholars and the United States as dominion of power.
In reference to the PBS documentary, the United States is critiqued by other nations due to striking speed that the American state underwent transformation during the 30 years after civil war. Other nations for instance, critique the U.S. for concentrating wealth in the hands of a few whilst creating acrimony and tension as industrialists leveraged their clout to influence the government. For example, most nations felt that the essence of democracy was to create equity as opposed to capitalism which created inequality as rich people deemed more powerful than poor individuals.
During the period of building the transcontinental railroad, the Chinese laborers were not allowed in famous photo after the completion of the railroad and this translated into discrimination of Americans against Asians. Besides, this still translate to the reason why the Asian countries are allies of the United States and by so, the state should protect its borders. According to Philip AHN and Korean Americans, the term Asian Americans is broad. Besides, in reference to this scenario, the Korean Americans felt that the Japanese deemed terrible and supported the United States as they were being interned in the U.S. moreover, not every single member of a group agrees to ethnicity and its interesting basing on the way Korean Americans lived under similar umbrella of being Asian American as they felt different than the Japanese.
As Asian Americans were often deemed as the model minority and ended up in a luminal threshold of having to be perfect, it is noted that Chinese and Korean Americans tried to set themselves up as the most patriotic Americans. For instance, Toy Goon a Chinese immigrant got recognized as American’s mother of the year in 1954. Besides, basing on the documentary this was as a result of a political reason. In the 1950’s this equally formed a double edged sword by letting Asian women to be perceived as no different than Reeds Donna bringing on added pressured that was already being beard by the Asian Americans. Focusing on the rise of Asian American politicians, the story of Hawaiian political warriors also champion to the current debate of immigration as Minsk who fought to be a member of congress was told that she could not win. On the other hand, those who supported her ended up putting money on Inouye by believing that Asian male had better chance something which opposes justice and equality as the Asian American community habitually only allocated Filipino and brown Asians a spot at the bottom of the staircase to be regarded as United States first class citizens.
In summary, future wars may for example in the United States may be more and even between different cultures if the legacy of other nation’s immigrants is not understood completely until everything. For instance, clashes between different cultures do not deem to happen just because of a specific concept however it’s because of certain economic aspects, inequalities, feelings and political context. Moreover, all these factors need to be taken into account to prevent future conflicts. Additionally, conflicts may happen between nations or ethnicities within the same civilizations.
References
Haynes, J. (2019). Introduction: The “Clash of Civilizations” and Relations between the West and the Muslim World.
(2020). Retrieved 4 June 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/clashofcivilizations.html
(2020). Retrieved 4 June 2020, from https://berniesanders.com/issues/welcoming%20and%20safe%20america-all
Podemski, P. (2019). Constructing collective memory through a documentary. The case of “The Italian Americans”(PBS, 2015). Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, 279-288
Bettizza, G., & Petito, F. (2018). Why (clash of) civilizations discourses just won’t go away? Understanding the civilizational politics of our times.