Dialogue Among Civilizations
Encyclopedia
Former Iran
ian president Mohammad Khatami
introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington
’s theory of a Clash of Civilizations
.
theorists with the interrogatively-titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", a controversial, oft-cited article published in Foreign Affairs
magazine. Its description of post–Cold War geopolitics
contrasted with the controversial End of History
thesis advocated by Francis Fukuyama
.
Huntington expanded "The Clash of Civilizations?" to book length and published it as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in 1996. The article and the book posit that post–Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences. That, whilst in the Cold War, conflict likely occurred between the Capitalist West and the Communist Bloc East, it now was most likely to occur between the world's major civilizations — identifying seven, and a possible eighth: (i) Western, (ii) Latin American, (iii) Islamic, (iv) Sinic (Chinese), (v) Hindu, (vi) Orthodox, (vii) Japanese, and (viii) the African. This cultural organization contrasts the contemporary world with the classical notion of sovereign states. To understand current and future conflict, cultural rifts must be understood, and culture — rather than the State — mern nations will lose predominance if they fail to recognize the irreconcilable nature of cultural tensions.
Critics (see Le Monde Diplomatique
articles) call The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order the theoretical legitimization of American-led Western aggression against China and the world's Islamic cultures. Nevertheless, this post–Cold War shift in geopolitical organization and structure requires that the West internally strengthens itself culturally, by abandoning the imposition of its ideal of democratic universalism and its incessant military interventionism. Other critics argue that Huntington's taxonomy is simplistic and arbitrary, and does not take account of the internal dynamics and partisan tensions within civilizations. Huntington's influence upon U.S. policy has been likened to that of British historian A.J. Toynbee
's controversial religious theories about Asian leaders in the early twentieth century.
Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for the UN Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations, has said:
Mr. Picco was appointed the Personal Representative to the Secretary-General for the United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations in 1999 in order to facilitate discussions on diversity, through organizing conferences, seminars and disseminating information and scholarly materials. Having served the United Nations for two decades, Mr. Picco is most recognized for participating in UN efforts to negotiate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and in bringing an end to the Iran-Iraq war. He believes that people should take responsibility for who they are, what they do, what they value, and what they believe in.
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian president Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...
’s theory of a Clash of Civilizations
Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world....
.
Introduction
The page dedicated to the United Nations Year of Dialog Among Civilizations introduces the idea as follows:The Vision
Here are some excerpts from the vision of the Foundation for Dialogue among Civilizations:The Mission
Here are some excerpts from the mission of the Foundation for Dialogue among Civilizations:Contrasting view: The Clash of Civilizations
In 1993, Huntington provoked great debate among international relationsInternational relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
theorists with the interrogatively-titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", a controversial, oft-cited article published in Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
magazine. Its description of post–Cold War geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
contrasted with the controversial End of History
The End of History and the Last Man
The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his 1989 essay "The End of History?", published in the international affairs journal The National Interest...
thesis advocated by Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...
.
Huntington expanded "The Clash of Civilizations?" to book length and published it as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in 1996. The article and the book posit that post–Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences. That, whilst in the Cold War, conflict likely occurred between the Capitalist West and the Communist Bloc East, it now was most likely to occur between the world's major civilizations — identifying seven, and a possible eighth: (i) Western, (ii) Latin American, (iii) Islamic, (iv) Sinic (Chinese), (v) Hindu, (vi) Orthodox, (vii) Japanese, and (viii) the African. This cultural organization contrasts the contemporary world with the classical notion of sovereign states. To understand current and future conflict, cultural rifts must be understood, and culture — rather than the State — mern nations will lose predominance if they fail to recognize the irreconcilable nature of cultural tensions.
- In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations, from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders. —— "The Clash of Civilizations?", original 1993 "Foreign Affairs" magazine article
Critics (see Le Monde Diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...
articles) call The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order the theoretical legitimization of American-led Western aggression against China and the world's Islamic cultures. Nevertheless, this post–Cold War shift in geopolitical organization and structure requires that the West internally strengthens itself culturally, by abandoning the imposition of its ideal of democratic universalism and its incessant military interventionism. Other critics argue that Huntington's taxonomy is simplistic and arbitrary, and does not take account of the internal dynamics and partisan tensions within civilizations. Huntington's influence upon U.S. policy has been likened to that of British historian A.J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
's controversial religious theories about Asian leaders in the early twentieth century.
Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for the UN Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations, has said:
- History does not kill. Religion does not rape women, the purity of blood does not destroy buildings and institutions do not fail. Only individuals do those things.
Mr. Picco was appointed the Personal Representative to the Secretary-General for the United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations in 1999 in order to facilitate discussions on diversity, through organizing conferences, seminars and disseminating information and scholarly materials. Having served the United Nations for two decades, Mr. Picco is most recognized for participating in UN efforts to negotiate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and in bringing an end to the Iran-Iraq war. He believes that people should take responsibility for who they are, what they do, what they value, and what they believe in.
Related comments
- "A basic change in political ethics is required for the realization of the proposal, The dialog among civilizations." (UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
1999)
- "In order to understand the meaning of the phrase dialogue among civilizations as defined here, one has no choice but to closely pay attention to a number of points one of which is the relationship between a politician and an artist, and the other is the relationship between ethics and politics." (KhatamiKhatami-Politicians:* Mohammad Khatami , Iranian reformist President, former President of Iran * Mohammad Reza Khatami , Iranian reformist politician, Vice Speaker of Iranian Parliament and brother of Mohammad Khatami...
, UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
1999)
- The Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish Understanding is a series of personal yet public conversations between Daniel Pearl’s father, Professor Judea Pearl, President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and Dr. Akbar Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University. The program grew out of Professors Ahmed and Pearl's shared concern about the deterioration of relationships between Muslim and Jewish communities around the world, and their strong belief that reconciliation between these two Abrahamic faiths can be achieved through frank and respectful dialogue. The discussions range from theological issues, historical perceptions to current events. In 2006 Professors Ahmed and Pearl were awarded the first annual Purpose Prize "in recognition of [their] simple, yet innovative approach to solving one of society’s most pressing problems." Professor Judea PearlJudea PearlJudea Pearl is a computer scientist and philosopher, best known for developing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks ....
is a well-known computer scientist, and the President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.
- "Dear President Khatami...I welcome your call for a dialogue between Islamic and Judeo-Christian civilizations because I believe that tensions between these two great world civilizations represent the most significant foreign policy challenge for the world community as we enter the twenty-first century." Excerpt from "An American Citizen Replies" (letter by Anthony J. Dennis to Iranian President Khatami dated August 18, 2000) published in the book LETTERS TO KHATAMI: A Reply To The Iranian President's Call For A Dialogue Among Civilizations. To date, this book, published and released on July 1, 2001, is the only published reply the now-former Iranian President Khatami has ever received from the West in response to Khatami's call for such a dialogue in an exclusive, hour-long interview on CNN with CNN Foreign Correspondent Christianne Amanpour broadcast in North America on January 7, 1998.
See also
- Centre for DialogueCentre for DialogueThe Centre for Dialogue is an interdisciplinary research institution at La Trobe University. Professor Joseph Camilleri, a prominent academic figure in the study of International Relations, is the director of the Centre. The research centre specialises in the philosophy, method and practice of...
- Alliance of CivilizationsAlliance of CivilizationsThe Alliance of Civilizations is an initiative proposed by the Prime Minister of the Government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at the 59th General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005. It was co-sponsored by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan...
- Interfaith dialogue
- Fethullah GülenFethullah GülenMuhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish preacher, author, educator, and Sufi Muslim scholar living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania . He is the founder and leader of the Gülen movement...
- Parliament of the World's ReligionsParliament of the World's ReligionsThere have been several meetings referred to as a Parliament of the World’s Religions, most notably the World's Parliament of Religions of 1893, the first attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths. The event was celebrated by another conference on its centenary in 1993...
- Institute for Interreligious DialogueInstitute for Interreligious DialogueInstitute for Interreligious Dialogue is a non-governmental organization devoted to dialog among religions throughout the world.The institute was founded in 2000, following the efforts by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami for promoting dialogs among cultures and civilizations...
External links
- Foundation for Dialogue among Civilizations in Geneva, the official website which includes various news and speeches
- United Nations: Background of Dialogue Among Civilizations
- UNESCO's contribution to Dialogue Among Civilizations
- United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations
- UNESCO's actions for the Dialogue among Civilizations
- UN Chronicle 2006, Interview with Khatami, five years after the UN 2001 Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations
- Daniel Pearl Foundation
- An Overview of Sino-Tibetan Dialogue