Theoretical and theological explanation of present and previous era by the scholars of both Western and Muslim block have agitated the dimension of war on terror in many respects. Political leaders exploit their ideas to validate the war and conflict. Huntington for example has identified eight or nine broader world civilizations and proclaimed that the future conflict will be occurred within the fault line of these civilizations. Moreover he articulates the Confucian-Islam connection as the most probable derivation of future conflicts. According to Huntington, “A new form of arms competition is thus occurring between Islamic- Confucian states and the West. In an old-fashioned arms race, each side developed its own arms to balance or to achieve superiority against the other side.
In this new form of arm competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent the arms buildup while at the same time reducing its own military capability.” In his article he has portrayed Confucian and the Islamic states as arms builder whereas the Westerns as the protector of peace and serenity.Huntington’s definition of “the civilization” itself has influence and shaped the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’. Kepel Gilles, in his book, “The War from the Muslim Mind: Islam and the west” suggested that Huntington’s article is “part of the theoretical underpinning,” for US policy makers’ distinction between ‘civilized Nations’ and ‘rogue states’. This is certainly born out in former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s comment that- if one looks down from the outer space on earth, you find a couple of handful of countries that are generally like thinking, and they tend to be Western European and North American, they have free economic system, and tend not to covert land or property or lives of other nations. Former US president Bush outlines his vision for the ‘war on terror’ stating, ‘this is civilization’s fight’. Thus, ‘clash of civilization’ rhetoric is intertwined with the very language of ‘war on terror’. Thus clash civilization agitates ruler’s intention to go for conflict.According to Bernard Lewis, another prominent western scholar- “Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.”
Furthermore he says-
“There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.”
At the beginning of 1990 he identified some countries as the potential opponent to USA. From my view point, such identifications have acted as a vehicle of terrorism and anti-terrorism posture and initiated the temper of contending parties. Even in the post-Cold War period, some Scholars have tried to define Islam as a new threat or an 'enemy' of the West, as M. Rodinson has pointed out that “the Muslims, a threat to Western Christendom long before they became a problem.” At that initial stage of unipolar world order Muslim countries were not in the mentality of contention with the West. Though the beater experience of Gulf war, Lebanon, Palestine crisis and Iranian revolution generate an emotional impression of Muslim brotherhood among their general people but that did not split West and Muslim into two counter ideologies, that did not created the notion of “we” and “they” or “terrorism” and “war on terror”.Rather Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” or Fukuyama’s “End of the History and the Last man” or “The Roots of Muslim Rage” by Bernard Lewis and several other Western scholarly writings have created and perpetuated the anti-Muslim connotation among some rulers of West.Besides, writings with the zeal of radicalism and extremism by Ibn Tayamiyyah, Hassan al Banna and specially Sayyid Qutub are some of the influential scholars whose writings have agitate Bin Laden and his follower to be the so called Jihadist.For Qutub, jihad as armed struggle in the defense of Islam against the injustice and the oppression of anti Islamic governments and the neocolonialism of the West and the East (Soviet Union) was incumbent upon all Muslims. There could be no middle ground.Like Hassan al-Banna and Mawlana Mawdudi, Qutub regarded the West as the historic enemy of Islam and demonstrated by the Crusades, European colonialism, and the cold war. The western threat was political, economic and religio-cultural. Equally threatening were the elites of the Muslim world who rule and govern according to foreign western secular principle and values that threatened the faith, identity and values of the Islamic societies.
In this new form of arm competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent the arms buildup while at the same time reducing its own military capability.” In his article he has portrayed Confucian and the Islamic states as arms builder whereas the Westerns as the protector of peace and serenity.Huntington’s definition of “the civilization” itself has influence and shaped the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’. Kepel Gilles, in his book, “The War from the Muslim Mind: Islam and the west” suggested that Huntington’s article is “part of the theoretical underpinning,” for US policy makers’ distinction between ‘civilized Nations’ and ‘rogue states’. This is certainly born out in former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s comment that- if one looks down from the outer space on earth, you find a couple of handful of countries that are generally like thinking, and they tend to be Western European and North American, they have free economic system, and tend not to covert land or property or lives of other nations. Former US president Bush outlines his vision for the ‘war on terror’ stating, ‘this is civilization’s fight’. Thus, ‘clash of civilization’ rhetoric is intertwined with the very language of ‘war on terror’. Thus clash civilization agitates ruler’s intention to go for conflict.According to Bernard Lewis, another prominent western scholar- “Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.”
Furthermore he says-
“There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.”
At the beginning of 1990 he identified some countries as the potential opponent to USA. From my view point, such identifications have acted as a vehicle of terrorism and anti-terrorism posture and initiated the temper of contending parties. Even in the post-Cold War period, some Scholars have tried to define Islam as a new threat or an 'enemy' of the West, as M. Rodinson has pointed out that “the Muslims, a threat to Western Christendom long before they became a problem.” At that initial stage of unipolar world order Muslim countries were not in the mentality of contention with the West. Though the beater experience of Gulf war, Lebanon, Palestine crisis and Iranian revolution generate an emotional impression of Muslim brotherhood among their general people but that did not split West and Muslim into two counter ideologies, that did not created the notion of “we” and “they” or “terrorism” and “war on terror”.Rather Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” or Fukuyama’s “End of the History and the Last man” or “The Roots of Muslim Rage” by Bernard Lewis and several other Western scholarly writings have created and perpetuated the anti-Muslim connotation among some rulers of West.Besides, writings with the zeal of radicalism and extremism by Ibn Tayamiyyah, Hassan al Banna and specially Sayyid Qutub are some of the influential scholars whose writings have agitate Bin Laden and his follower to be the so called Jihadist.For Qutub, jihad as armed struggle in the defense of Islam against the injustice and the oppression of anti Islamic governments and the neocolonialism of the West and the East (Soviet Union) was incumbent upon all Muslims. There could be no middle ground.Like Hassan al-Banna and Mawlana Mawdudi, Qutub regarded the West as the historic enemy of Islam and demonstrated by the Crusades, European colonialism, and the cold war. The western threat was political, economic and religio-cultural. Equally threatening were the elites of the Muslim world who rule and govern according to foreign western secular principle and values that threatened the faith, identity and values of the Islamic societies.