The clash of civilizations thesis persists because it justifies advancing Western interests.

Evidence

Although Huntington’s schema has drawn widespread criticism for its reductive simplifications, which, among other things, do not sufficiently acknowledge the mutual interpenetration central to the development of all cultures, the clash of civilizations thesis has gained popularity in many quarters as a means to understand extremism and to justify the aggressive advancement of Western interests, especially against Muslim peoples. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 44

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Establishes the critical framing of Huntington’s clash of civilizations as an ideological instrument, a key term for Morey’s broader argument.

Related

• A discredited academic thesis can still mainstream state Islamophobia. (similarity 0.88)
• Huntington attributes complex world conflicts to unchanging civilizational essences (similarity 0.86)
• The clash of civilizations thesis asserts Western values are alien to Islamic societies. (similarity 0.85)
• Islam has had more violent intercivilizational conflicts than other civilizations (similarity 0.84)
• Western monolithic hostility strengthens Muslim identity into cosmic defiance, making conflict self-fulfilling. (similarity 0.84)
• Western anti-Muslim hostility has been episodic and elite-driven, not a perpetual clash (similarity 0.84)
• Civilizational confidence asymmetry drives Muslim-Western conflict (similarity 0.84)
• Intercivilization conflict divides into micro-level religious fault lines and a macro-level West-versus-rest division (similarity 0.84)
• Huntington’s clash-of-civilisations thesis lacks empirical evidence (similarity 0.83)
• The clash-of-civilizations thesis converted political conflict into cultural racialization (similarity 0.83)
• Huntington’s clash-of-civilizations thesis gave the terror war a crusade framing (similarity 0.83)
• Muslims were disproportionately involved in intergroup violence relative to their share of world population. (similarity 0.83)
• Huntington repackaged Orientalist binaries into a new lexicon of civilizational clash. (similarity 0.83)
• Huntington’s clash-of-civilizations thesis came to frame the entire War on Terror. (similarity 0.83)
• The clash-of-civilizations paradigm serves to prolong dominance (similarity 0.82)