Huntington’s clash thesis erases power asymmetries among Muslims and fuels racism.

Evidence

Huntington’s essentialist and reductive approach makes no distinction between violence that is engaged on equal footing, violence that is perpetrated by dominant Muslim powers, and violence that is done to subordinated Muslims, including to Muslim women and children: … Islam has bloody borders. This argument that replaces communism with Islam as the global bogeyman has enormous attraction for those already predisposed to Islamophobia. Reflecting this essentialist perspective, in the pursuit of empire, recent American invasions often include the view that Muslims in invaded lands are racially different than those who invade. The racist stereotypes used to describe the “natives” in the Muslim world are the same ones used in the United States to alienate immigrant Muslims, to render them separate and unassimilable even though they are already a highly assimilated immigrant population. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 241

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to comparing her racecraft lens with Aziz’s treatment of clash-of-civilizations discourse. — connects to: Media and scholarship doubly erase black American Muslims’ existence and voices. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 452; Huntington’s clash thesis named all of Islam, not just fundamentalism, as the West’s problem — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 229; Muslims were doubly erased as either distant inferiors or militant Black Americans — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 522 (+7 more)
• QUESTION: The claim that the same stereotypes operate abroad and domestically deserves probing — is the mechanism shared or merely parallel?

Broader Connections

• The clash-of-civilizations thesis converted political conflict into cultural racialization #corroborates (0.88)
• Anti-Muslim racism collapses diverse names, skin tones, dress, and nations into one imagined enemy. #exemplifies (0.85)
• Huntington’s clash thesis named all of Islam, not just fundamentalism, as the West’s problem #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 229
• Huntington’s clash-of-civilizations thesis gave the terror war a crusade framing #expands (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 59
• Crusade rhetoric racialized Muslims as a vile and accursed race. #exemplifies (0.80) — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion, 12
• Media and scholarship doubly erase black American Muslims’ existence and voices. #expands (0.78) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 452
• Muslims were doubly erased as either distant inferiors or militant Black Americans #expands (0.76) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 522
• Huntington claims Muslim proximity to non-Muslims inherently causes violence #expands (0.75) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 208
• Huntington’s anti-Islam rhetoric recycled earlier tropes against Catholics and Jews #corroborates (0.74)
• Huntington himself rejected a stark two-bloc Muslim-versus-West framing #complicates (0.72) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 674