But they also require us to look carefully at local circumstances and not to fall into the trap of magnifying the potency of the al Qaida associates or even to see this as the clash of civilizations or a broad Islamic Jihad against the west.
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We have long been awaiting to hear the United States of America, the world's number one power, shouldering its full share of responsibility in avoiding the clash of cultures and civilizations between East and West.
And second, the militants' aim to provoke a clash of civilizations between the West and an interpretation of Islam that rejects pluralism and modernity.
The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith, is a unique and vital addition to the current debate on the Middle East because rather than interpret the Arabs through the ideological lenses of the West, Smith describes them, their cultural and political motivations as the Arabs in all their ethnic, religious, ideological, national and tribal variations themselves perceive these things.
The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith, is a unique and vital addition to the current debate on the Middle East because rather than interpret the Arabs through the ideological lenses of the West, Smith describes them, their cultural and political motivations as the Arabs -- in all their ethnic, religious, ideological, national and tribal variations -- themselves perceive these things.
That's no small achievement, since so many of its issues -- domestic politics, the Middle East, the clash of civilizations -- are debated with such steadfast self-importance.
The clash of civilizations and conflicts of weaponry emerge as a set of miniature epic battles of wills and wiles that predate the rival social orders.
For instance, I was trained in graduate school by political scientists like the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington (of The Clash of Civilizations fame) and economists like Janos Kornai, yet I am completely mystified by chemistry.
Of course, this war should not be the start of a clash of civilizations, either.
The latter hold the key to defeating our mutual enemy and, thereby, to avoiding the potentially apocalyptic "clash of civilizations" sought by that enemy.
My other hope now -- in my seventh month of pregnancy -- is that I will be able to tell our son that his father carried the flag to end terrorism, raising an unprecedented demand among people from all countries not for revenge but for the values we all share: love, compassion, friendship and citizenship far transcending the so-called clash of civilizations.
We have a chance of both countering our common foe, the non-Islamist Muslims and ourselves, and I think ensuring that this is thought properly as it should at the ideological level, rather than becoming this Huntingtonesque clash of civilizations.
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