Muslim groups were in violent conflict with almost every neighboring civilization in the 1990s.

Evidence

Throughout the nineteenth century Russia gradually extended by force its control over the Muslim peoples of Central Asia. During the 1980s Afghans and Russians fought a major war, and with the Russian retreat its sequel continued in Tajikistan between Russian forces supporting the existing government and largely Islamist insurgents. In Xinjiang, Uighurs and other Muslim groups struggle against Sinification and are developing relations with their ethnic and religious kin in the former Soviet republics. In the Subcontinent, Pakistan and India have fought three wars, a Muslim insurgency contests Indian rule in Kashmir, Muslim immigrants fight tribal peoples in Assam, and Muslims and Hindus engage in periodic riots and violence across India, these outbreaks fueled by the rise of fundamentalist movements in both religious communities. In Bangladesh, Buddhists protest discrimination against them by the majority Muslims, while in Myanmar Muslims protest discrimination by the Buddhist majority. In Malaysia and Indonesia, Muslims periodically riot against Chinese, protesting their domination of the economy. In southern Thailand, Muslim groups have been involved in an intermittent insurgency against a Buddhist government, while in the southern Philippines a Muslim insurgency fights for independence from a Catholic country and government. In Indonesia, on the other hand, Catholic East Timorians struggle against repression by a Muslim government. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 707

Categorization

• XREF: This catalog of Muslim-non-Muslim conflict echoes the ‘frontier of the crescent’ thesis and connects to the reader’s interest in how civilizations define themselves against an external other.
• QUESTION: The mutual persecution complaints in Bangladesh/Myanmar and the East Timor example complicate a simple ‘Muslims vs everyone’ story — worth checking whether Huntington acknowledges these cut both ways.