How to Win the Clash of Civilizations

Originally Published on the Wall Street Journal
18 August 2010

The key advantage of Huntington's famous model is that it describes the world as it is—not as we wish it to be.

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," particularly the clash between Islam and the West.