Civilizational confidence asymmetry drives Muslim-Western conflict

Evidence

The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 586

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paired asymmetry — Muslim cultural superiority with power inferiority vs. Western cultural universality with declining power — is Huntington’s tightest formulation of the civilizational engine.
• XREF: The ‘universality vs. superiority’ dynamic recurs across Huntington’s broader argument and contrasts sharply with the Cold War’s ideological conflict framing.