Huntington defines non-Western peoples in religious rather than national terms
Evidence
Like Lewis, Huntington invokes a number of classic Orientalist themes. He assumes that the West constitutes a distinct and superior civilization. He defines non-Western peoples mostly in religious or ethnic terms (Confucian instead of Chinese, Islamic instead of Egyptian, and so on). He promotes the imperial interests of the West at the expense of Arab and Muslim regions. And he characterizes Islam as violent and inherently prone to aggression. On this last point, his observation that “Islam has bloody borders” is a not-so-subtle suggestion that Muslims are responsible for all of the conflicts in which they find themselves, including clashes with Western powers. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 226
Categorization
- XREF: This is where the sphere of religion bleeds into the sphere of a people — an Egyptian becomes ‘Islamic,’ collapsing statehood into faith, directly relevant to the reader’s question about whether the religion/people line holds. — connects to: Huntington himself rejected a stark two-bloc Muslim-versus-West framing — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 674; Huntington repackaged Orientalist binaries into a new lexicon of civilizational clash. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 229; Huntington’s clash-of-civilisations thesis lacks empirical evidence — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 249
- SEED: Angle: the rhetorical move of renaming nationalities as religious blocs (Chinese → Confucian, Egyptian → Islamic) is itself a mechanism of Islamophobic discourse worth an essay.
Broader Connections
- Huntington himself rejected a stark two-bloc Muslim-versus-West framing
#complicates(0.50) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 674 - Huntington repackaged Orientalist binaries into a new lexicon of civilizational clash.
#expands(0.40) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 229