Cultural harmony does not require uniformity among civilizations

Evidence

Perhaps against liberal intellectuals and the Orientalist “sympathizers,” he insists that “concord and harmony do not mean uniformity, and to think that they do would be to defer to those theories of utopian equality which are one of the things we denounce.” Inasmuch as a civilization is expected to, and should, be unique, it should be “normal,” which means that “it will always be able to develop itself without being a danger to other civilizations.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 327

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Guénon’s distinction between ‘harmony/concord’ (compatible uniqueness) and ‘uniformity’ (utopian equality) — two modes of inter-civilizational relation that liberal thought often conflates.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is a genuinely dense distinction: concord without uniformity as a model of civilizational pluralism that neither flattens difference nor licenses conflict. Worth sitting with as a corrective to both liberal universalism and crude relativism.
• XREF: connects to: Culture in Relation divides and specifies without claiming primordial status — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 814; Emphasizing essential cultural difference feeds the clash-of-civilizations frame — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 256; Multicultural practices do not erase allegiance to an encompassing cultural group. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 931