The West’s apparent unity masks deep internal divisions

Evidence

In short, contrary to the myth that the West and the East have always been in conflict, conflict has in fact coexisted with cooperation. Far from the notion that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” what we have seen is that the histories of the East and the West, to the extent we can even talk about a singular East and West, are deeply intertwined. At the very least we have to say that such broad geographical and religious characterizations as “Islam and the West” are extremely problematic—not least because the Christian Byzantine Empire thrived in the lands designated as “the East” up until the fifteenth century, and Muslim rule in al-Andalus lasted for about eight hundred years. Thus, the notion of a transhistoric “clash of civilizations” between a united Christian West and a Muslim East is highly flawed. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The West manufactured its own internal others; The East and West have coexisted in conflict and cooperation, not eternal clash — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97; East and West are analytical distinctions, not literal geographic categories

Related

• The East and West have coexisted in conflict and cooperation, not eternal clash (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalist assumptions restrict non-Western history to relations with the West (similarity 0.89)
• The canal project imposed modern technopolitical will upon the fixity of East and West. (similarity 0.88)
• The West is framed as having surpassed religion while Islam remains mired in it (similarity 0.82)
• Bernard Lewis reduced fourteen centuries of East-West to unchanging conflict. (similarity 0.81)
• Post-imperial Islam-West conflicts center on issues beyond territory (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia descends directly from Orientalism’s civilizational divide between Islam and the West (similarity 0.81)
• West-versus-rest political conflict is an intra-Western ideological dispute (similarity 0.81)
• The clash of civilizations thesis asserts Western values are alien to Islamic societies. (similarity 0.81)
• Islamic challenge forged the collective identity of ‘the West’ (similarity 0.81)
• Islam’s challenge helped forge western Europe’s collective identity as the West. (similarity 0.81)
• European identity formed through internal cohesion paired with contrast to other worlds (similarity 0.81)
• Western anti-Muslim hostility has been episodic and elite-driven, not a perpetual clash (similarity 0.80)
• Western attitudes to Islam have shifted across history rather than forming a constant clash. (similarity 0.80)
• East and West are analytical distinctions, not literal geographic categories (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• The East and West have coexisted in conflict and cooperation, not eternal clash #qualifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97