Hybrid civilisation or Clash of civilisations?: Re-visiting the Muslim Other

Abstract

The clash-of-civilisations thesis, introduced by Samuel Huntington in the early 1990s, is still debated, and at times propagated, by analysts and policy-makers. Islam has been at the forefront of the debate throughout the entirety of this period and especially following the September 11 attacks. The rise of ISIS gave the thesis even more space in an increasingly divisive political climate. The thesis undermines multiculturalism and the social fabric of modern societies. It espouses division, ignoring the hybrid nature of civilisations and how different civilisations learn and absorb from each other. Those who promote the thesis and the collective superiority of Western civilisation strip humanity from the so-called separate, violent and inferior other. This lecture attempts to deconstruct the clash‑of‑civilisations thesis by analysing Islam and the West in a fragmented and polarised environment. It will look at the overt and subtle attempts to construct the ‘Muslim other’ as incapable of integrating and operating in the Modern world. In doing so, the lecture examines the vibrant debates taking place in Muslim societies challenging the notion of homogeneity of cultures, religions and civilisations.

Short biography

Dr Raihan Ismail is an ARC DECRA fellow and a lecturer at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University (ANU). Her research interests include Sunni-Shia relations, women in Islam, and Middle East politics and she has published widely on these topics in academic and non-academic outlets. She is the author of Saudi Clerics and Shia Islam (OUP, 2016) and is currently working on a book project (under contract with Oxford University Press) on the transnational networks of Salafi clerics in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In 2018, she was the co-recipient of the Max Crawford Medal. Since 2015, she has co-convened the Political Islam seminar series for Commonwealth government agencies, including AGD and Defence.