Circular motions are all around us. Some are visible or perceptible, while many are not. In a contemplative piece in this issue, Jacob Hardy, a dear friend, writes about this fantastic phenomenon that permeates the universe: “Circling in the Universe.” From the smallest forms of existence at the atomic level to the giant galaxies in outer space, circular motions define a key dynamic in how the universe functions. One of these motions discussed in Hardy’s piece is the circulation of blood in our body. In what could be described as no less than a miraculous system, blood travels nearly the half the length of the equator, only in our body, in just a single day. Our circulatory system brings fresh oxygen and nutrients to our muscles and organs, while carrying away waste. We are thankful to Dr. Hardy for this contemplative piece, and we pray that his healthy blood circulation enables a quick recovery.

9/11 has been a turning point in world history. It was not only a devastating day for the lives lost and their families, but also for millions of people around the world – not least for those who had devoted their lives to a dialogue of civilizations as opposed to the “clash of civilizations.” Professor Ron Messier was one of those who had been studying and teaching Islam for more than three decades by 2001. Though saddened by a prospect that his life’s work would possibly be wasted, he chose to find a channel of communication for dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. And he chose Jesus as the focus of this dialogue, for he knew how important Jesus is to both Christians and Muslims. Professor Messier has written for this issue a brief summation of his book Jesus – One Man, Two Faiths: A Dialogue between Christians and Muslims. His conversations with both Muslims and Christians on Jesus offer interesting perspectives, from which much can be learned.  

Also in this issue is a memoir by Kerri Davidson: “In the Eye.” Her piece is a beautiful reminiscence of how parents and kids communicate with their eyes, exchanging feelings of fear, love, and trust. Davidson narrates how she connected with her parents through eye contact. This connection saw them through experiences as mundane as watching horror movies and as traumatic as surviving natural disasters, from leaving home for college to hospital visits. Her story offers many ups and downs, encapsulating the hope and anxiety that every one of us goes through in our lives.

A rainbow is a celestial marvel stretching across the sky after the rain. Along with its spectacular beauty, a rainbow is also a mathematical miracle. By using the language of mathematics, Ali Kaya shows in detail what rainbows offer us.

Considering the limited astronomical technology these civilizations had, it would be unfair to expect our ancestors to know that an eclipse was just the moon coming between the Earth and the sun. But for believers, regardless of time or circumstance, nothing happens without a purpose. A celestial event as big as an eclipse can, at the very least, inspire a sense of awe in all of us. We are reminded how easy it is for darkness to descend upon our lives. But we are also aware that just as the eclipse doesn’t last for long, these periods of darkness will also pass. The light will return.

This issue’s lead article uses an eclipse as a metaphor for a reason. For the author, Fethullah Gülen, a real eclipse is not a celestial event, but when we are faced with weaknesses like “contempt for values, addiction to pomp and vanity, avarice and indulgence in pleasures, worldly ambitions and wishfullness for eternal life in this world, Machiavellianism … outrageous indifference, embarrassing heedlessness, being silent like in the face of sheer injustice, and closing our ears to the uproars of despots and oppressors and to the cries of innocents and victims.” Yet Gülen believes that if there are a few souls devoted to lofty ideals, who are patient and seek the Divine good pleasure, then there is always hope; and eclipses, however long they may last, will eventually end.

Complementing the lead article, Alice Bolton writes on Ibn Khaldun’s theory that a life of luxury is enough to bring down even the strongest civilizations. Considered the first sociologist in history, Ibn Khaldun argued that group solidarity is vital to political power. He believed that the sedentary lifestyles of urban city life gradually erode a society’s togetherness, eventually leading to civilizational collapse. Bolton introduces readers to the life and influence of this remarkable social scientist, whose theories seem relevant to many nations today.

Timbuktu provides a good example of Ibn Khaldun’s theory. Located today within the borders of Mali, in West Africa, Timbuktu was once a remarkable center of learning and trade, which West Africans perceived as a cultural and economic capital equal to “Rome, Fez, and Mecca.” Adam Penale, from the University of Buffalo, shows how Timbuktu rose to the heights of a vibrant center of education, only to fall into a city of sand and dust.

One country currently facing such serious “civilizational” problems is Turkey. In this issue, Fr. Thomas Michel of Georgetown University writes on the complicated recent situation in Turkey, especially with regards to the ruling Erdoğan regime and the Hizmet Movement. Under normal circumstances The Fountain does not cover politics as we have done in the last few issues. However, over the last few years, the Erdoğan regime has banned The Fountain – as well as hundreds of other media outlets – in Turkey. This obliges us not only to defend our rights in terms of freedom of the press and free enterprise, but also to give voice to those persecuted simply for being associated with the Hizmet Movement. We hope this tyrannical regime will soon be over, and we will not need to cover such stories any more in our future issues.

Leiden is a small picture-perfect postcard Dutch university town, full of canals, cobbled streets, windmills, high-roofed 17th century houses, cheerful blond girls whizzing by on bicycles, imposing churches, and markets full of tulips and aged cheese. If Hollywood needed a stage for a film about Holland, it would be here. Yet this is no stereotypical Dutch town: Leiden is also a city unique in Europe, for it has a longstanding relationship with the Arabic and Muslim world. If there was anywhere I could feel the potential of human endeavor among peoples, it would be here.

On a bright, sunny Saturday morning at the end of January, I visited the bustling market and crossed bridges over canals, discovering the back streets, courtyards, and narrow alleys of this romantic town. The Mayflower pilgrims set forth to America from here; Rembrandt grew up here and went on to paint the heartbreak of humanity in oils; fellow Leiden painter, Jan Steen, captured the exuberance of existence in his. I ducked into the local public library for a visit, and when I stepped out the door, I came face to face with a brick wall covered by a mural written in Arabic script. This was the “Wereldwinkel” (fair trade shop.) The mural was a poem written by Nasir Kazmi (1925-1972) in Urdu, an important South-Asian language with over 250 million speakers in India, Pakistan, and other countries, and which uses Arabic script. I soon learned that it is one of the some 100 poems written by international poets that grace walls throughout the city: Shakespeare, Neruda, Sugawara no Michizane, Verlaine, Reverdy, Sapho, and William Carlos Williams all have their words immortalized in their native languages and scripts on high for all to contemplate as they pass. As I wandered along the streets of the city, I took delight in discovering many poems surprising me in unexpected places, and I even found one in Turkish, written by Fakir Baykurt (1929-1999). Yet, I could not help but wonder why a poem in Arabic had been set in such a prominent place.

I soon learned that this was but the tip of the Oriental iceberg. For over 400 years, Leiden has been deeply involved in Arabic studies, and the Islamic world has played a significant part in the history and culture of this European city. In 1575, stadtholder William of Orange granted Leiden the first university in the Northern Netherlands. A few years later, in 1613, the gifted linguist Thomas van Erpe (1584-1624) – better known by his Latinized name, Erpenius – became the first occupant of Leiden University’s chair for Arabic. The decision to create the position was taken in 1599, when the University was just 24 years old. In our world of jet travel and instant internet globalism, it is hard for us to realize that in the days of 16th century Europe, the Oriental world was still akin to outer space: manuscripts, printed books, and savants were rare – only a few handful existed in Europe – and lexicons and grammars were unheard of, so it is impressive that the University of Leiden took this initiative. Such a daring move was all the more impressive because wars, starvation, and plague had left 1/3 of the city’s population dead. Leiden was fighting for its life, and during these difficult days they turned to a light from the east as a beacon of hope, and not as a scourge of destruction. Could our world, in January 2015, think the same way? Erpenius, after learning Arabic in Paris from an Egyptian Copt and a Spanish Muslim, dreamed of setting sail to Istanbul to study Oriental languages, but he never made it. He published an Arab grammar book, which remained in use until the 19th century and established Leiden as the center of Arabic studies in Europe: students came from all over the European continent to study here. He spent his last years translating the Qur’an into Latin, but unfortunately never completed it, as he died of the plague in 1624 at the young age of 40. More than four centuries after Erpenius was appointed, Leiden is still the center for Arabic studies in the Netherlands.

The first recorded Muslim to live in Leiden was a North African named Omar Boek, probably from Morocco, who settled here in 1596. As every good Muslim strives to be, he was charitable: it is recorded that he donated money to help the poor by rebuilding a local convent. Why he came here we do not know, but he must have cut an exotic figure as he strolled along the canals, and I often wonder if the young Rembrandt ever crossed his path.

Indeed, since the beginning of the 16th century, Leiden’s scholars, businesses, and citizens have used their knowledge of the Islamic world to make Leiden a culturally and economically richer city. The creation of the chair for Arabic was done for pragmatic reasons, motivated by the Dutch logic for commerce and trade. The teaching of Arabic would benefit the Netherland’s commercial activities, especially in Southeast Asia, where the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. It was not just commerce, however, that motivated this move, for the study of Arabic allowed the University to put itself on the European map of academic excellence and allowed philologists to better understand and teach others of the human achievement as witnessed by history and other cultural viewpoints. Learning Arabic allowed students to access Arab sapientia, or wisdom. The ability to read Arabic texts in the original offered a gateway to the Arab’s exceptional contributions in the fields of medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and geography, and gave insight to a civilization longer lived than that of Rome. It opened a door to a rich and extensive world; a provocative world of expanded and arresting knowledge.

In addition, printers and publishers clustered around the university scholars. The oriental collections of the University Library are some of the most impressive in Europe, but there is more in Leiden: it is the home of the international publishing house, E.J. Brill. Say the world “Brill” to an Orientalist and you will see his face light up and hear the awe of admiration in his voice. Brill is, quite simply, the most erudite publishing house in the field.

The first printer of Arabic in the Netherlands was a certain E. J. Brill of Leiden, whose business became known in the publishing world for their ability to type set and print many Oriental and uncommon languages. Brill focused on Orientalist materials in Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Malay, and Japanese. The famous Encyclopedia of Islam is one of the highlights of this house, first printed from 1913-1938 in 4 volumes and supplements. In the 1960’s Brill moved its modernized printing activity away from the original building on the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine Canal), and the type-setting presses and blocks of 5,100 characters in the famous “Brill Typeface” offering a complete coverage of the Latin script with the full range of diacritic characters needed to display any language correctly were shut down – but do not fear, the typeface is now available for downloading for free on the Brill website.

In architecture, too, you can discover traces of the Islamic culture in Leiden. Walk down Leiden’s main street, the Breestraat, and you will see at the top of the V-D emporium an impressive piece of sculpture in the tympanum, known as the Guilded Turk. The carving comprises a bust wearing a turban, reigning above the house of two merchant brothers, Jan and Adriaen Le Pla, who had made their wealth primarily through trade in the Levant. The brothers even lived in Istanbul at one point. This gilded figure expresses the longstanding commercial relationship between Leiden and the Middle East. Look closely and you will discover the story of their business: Neptune, the god of the sea, is at the left, and Mercury, the god of trade, is on the right. Mercury coddles a bundle of ‘grein’ or ‘Turkish cloth’ under his arm, a fabric produced using either silk or angora wool, as hinted by the Angora goat peeping from behind his feet. Angora wool was shipped from Ankara to Smyrna (Izmir) to Leiden, where it was combined with European wool, dyed and processed in 7 different guild halls. This cloth was exported to Europe and even back to the Levant, making rich not only the merchants of Leiden, but also those of Ankara. Peasant goat herders in Anatolia made the Burghers of Leiden the richest men of Holland, all from the hair of a Turkish goat.

You can also look up to the top of the facade of Leiden’s monumental City Hall, and notice a curious embellishment on the edge of the roof: yes, you are right; those are alems, the crescent moon finials seen on every mosque in Turkey. It is believed that the crescent moons are there in reference to the Dutch Protestant protesters who rebelled against the Spanish Crown in 1574, and who held as their motto “Rather Turkish than Papist!” Led by William of Orange, these rebels affirmed that they would rather become Muslim subjects than remain subjects of the Catholic King of Spain, for they had observed that the Ottoman Turks under Selim II were more tolerant of other religions than Catholicism was at the time, an attitude perhaps not held by all the current European Common Market leaders today.

It is not just in books and commerce and architecture that Leiden formed bonds with the Middle East, but also in botany. In 1587, Leiden University decided to create a medicinal herb garden and teach botany. A botanist named Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) accepted the University’s commission to create the garden. When the Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522-1592) returned from the Court of Suleiman the Magnificent with a tulip bulb in his saddlebags, it was to Clusius that he turned. In Vienna, he passed it on to Clusius, who was at the time the prefect of the Austrian imperial garden. When Clusius took up an appointment at the University of Leiden in 1593, he planted that bulb in the botanical garden of the University. His detailed planting lists have made it possible to recreate his garden, and a small, fenced-in area at the entry of the Horus Botanicus Garden honors the spot where it was planted, next to a statue of the legendary horticulturist. Thus bloomed the first tulips in Western Europe, and as the story goes, the rest is history. The tulip became much sought after by collectors, and ultimately the tulip market got completely out of hand, with tulip bulbs changing hands for astronomical prices. Tulipmania reached its peak in 1636-37, after which the market collapsed and many traders went bankrupt. Also in the Botanical Gardens of Leiden is an old observatory originally founded by Jacobus Golius (1596-1677), professor of Arabic, who traveled to Istanbul and Aleppo and collected many astronomy manuscripts for Leiden University, including one created by Ottoman Sultan Murad IV’s court astronomer.

I looked at the ordered, calm, and industrious Dutch of this city and realized not only how much we need to see, read, hear, and ask about the life and ways of thinking in the lands far beyond these canals, but also of the lives of those “different” ones now living among us. Is the legacy of Erpenius alive today in Leiden?

Yes, it is. Today, Leiden University has one of the largest and most extensive departments covering the Muslim world – from Morocco to Indonesia; from the rise of Islam to the present. Today, some 6,000 priceless manuscripts from the Middle East in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish can be found in Leiden University Library’s Middle East and Islam Collections, such as the “Ring of the Dove” by Tawq al-hamamafi’l-ulfa wa ‘l-ullaf, an 11th century Arabic book about love.

Today, you can see the Turkish Mimar Sinan Mosque, built in 1995 for the Turkish community in the precinct of a former Dutch Reformed Church, and which offered the first minaret on the skyline of Leiden.

Today, there are halal Islamic butcher shops and Turkish barbers scattered on the streets of the city and Moroccans selling olives in the market, driving taxis and tending municipal bicycle garages.

A former church building on Rembrandtstraat housed the Moroccan Al Hijra Mosque, present in Leiden for 30 years. Al-Hijra commemorates the migration of Mohammed and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622, a reference not lost on these immigrants. This building was replaced in 2012, when a brand new mosque opened in northern Leiden in a neighborhood more convenient to the Moroccan community.

Today, one can hope that Arabic is studied not to decipher ancient scientific texts, but to have an increased knowledge about the modern Middle East and Islamic culture. The sudden and pressing relevance of the events of January 7th bring all of this activity to imperative consciousness. Perhaps the goals of the University are not the same as in the 17th century, and most certainly the social structure of the Islamic world has changed since then – but what remains the same is that this city maintains a welcoming and appreciative place for that voice coming from afar – whether it manifests itself as medieval manuscripts, Arabic poems on walls, or Turkish butcher shops. This is a lesson for all of us to heed.

In the late January afternoon, a cold wind picked up and I wrapped my wool scarf more tightly around my neck as I strolled along the picturesque canals of the city. I was reminded that we must wrap our lives in optimism and beauty, or else we are doomed to live a perpetual polar winter of cultural, racial, and religious misunderstandings. Like those 17th century tulip dealers in Holland, we, too, will go bankrupt if we let our mania get out of control in the wrong way. I thought of the last lines of the poem of Nasir Kazmi that I saw on the wall opposite the public library:

If the cruel wind of the times continues to sway,
Earth will lie drained of water, the sun deceived of rays.

Spring is soon coming, and the beds of the Leiden Botanical Garden and all of Holland will be ablaze with dancing floral turbans, of many colors and varieties. I think of the mountains of freshly-cut blooms that fill the cargo holds of hundreds of planes departing from Schiphol Airport each day, bringing their splendor to the entire world. It all started here in Leiden, with one bulb from a foreign land planted in peace; with the will of one community to work together and live not as enemies, but friends; with Europeans willing to embrace the difference of the other and to learn from it. I take the inspiration gleaned on my walks along those cobblestone streets of Leiden in the suitcase of my mind as a souvenir more precious than any piece of Delft china: the hope for a world where we, too, can bloom in harmonious color with our neighbors, and where we can share our lives with Islam – not as enemies, but as blossoms in one garden of beauty.

In his studies, (1993, 1996) Huntington suggests alternative explanations to understanding conflicts and disputes in the post-Cold War period. To him, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20).

The purpose of this paper is to test Huntington’s argument (1996) by addressing the following question: “Does a civilizational difference cause militarized interstate dispute?” The significance of the answer to this question is obvious: if Huntington’s claim is empirically supported, then dominant theories of international politics, which do not base conflicts on civilizational differences, have to be revised. And, therefore, Huntington’s theory will be useful in understanding the emerging world-order and explaining militarized disputes and conflicts that have occurred in the post-Cold War era.

Literature review

There were many responses and objections to Huntington’s argument that resulted in an extensive debate. Many of them claimed that the civilization theory is unable to explain the causes of conflicts and international order. In spite of the great number of responses and studies, few of these have been supported by quantitative research.

One of the important studies that evaluated Huntington’s argument and which deserves close attention was conducted by Russett, Oneal, and Cox in 2000 (in Triangulating Peace 2001, 239-305). The main question to be answered was “Does a difference in civilization increase the likelihood that a pair of states will become involved in a militarized interstate dispute?” (Russett et al 2001, 248). To perform their study, they used the University of Michigan’s Correlates of War (COW) database that provided Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). In their view, limiting their analysis to MID that occurred during the 1950-92 period was appropriate, because “Huntington addressed events in these years when he first presented his argument in 1993” (249). Variables of liberal and realist theories were also added to their analysis in order to observe which theory had had higher explanatory and predictive power. Results of logistic regression indicated that variables of liberal and realist theories had much more influence on the probability of conflict than on civilization theory. Belonging to different civilizations increases the risk of dispute between two states only by 12 percent with .30 level of statistical significance. (255).

Huntington (2000, 609) replied to Russett et al, suggesting that they retest their argument as it was dealing with the post-Cold War period. Russett et al (2000, 611), in turn, argued that Huntington (1993) had used many disputes and conflicts that had not occurred in the post-Cold War era to justify and support his argument. That was the reason why they used MID of the 1950-92 period.

Another study to test Huntington’s argument was conducted by Jonathan Fox in 2001. He tried to examine whether conflicts between civilizations, particularly Western and Islamic conflicts, had increased with the end of the Cold War (Fox 2001, 459). He used the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset for his quantitative research and came up with interesting results. From a global perspective, the ratio of non-civilizational conflicts to civilizational conflicts had not changed significantly after the end of the Cold War. From an Islamic civilization perspective, there had been little change in the amount of conflicts among Islamic and other civilizations. However, from the perspective of Western civilizations, the proportion of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations had significantly increased since the end of the Cold War. Fox concludes that the findings illustrate that it is important which perspective one looks at conflicts from. If one looks from the Western perspective, they will find an increased amount of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations, which supports Huntington’s argument. But from the global and Islamic civilization perspective, little evidence can be found for a “clash of civilizations” in the post-Cold War period (459).

Although Fox’s study deserves attention, it does not examine conflicts among the other seven civilizations, but only focuses on the Western versus Islamic civilizations. Furthermore, his units of analysis are conflicts within states, not interstate. Interstate disputes are important in analyzing Huntington’s argument, because a nation as a whole has specific civilizational characteristics. According to Huntington’s map (1996, 26-27) of civilizations, each nation belongs to one of the nine civilizations and conflicts mostly arise among these. Conflicts that occur within states are only one minor part of Huntington’s argument.

Many other scholars have qualitatively criticized Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory. Ali Mazrui (1997) finds three major problems in Huntington’s argument. First, there is a “factual fallacy.” “It may not be factually true that the main lines of conflict of the future, following the Cold War, will be lines of clash of civilizations. It could be states or economic blocs” (Mazrui in Rashid 97, 27). Second, there could also be a “conceptual fallacy” in Huntington’s argument. Mazrui suggests a “clash of races” as an alternative to the clash of civilizations (27). Thirdly, there is a “temporal fallacy,” which means that inter-civilizational conflicts are not phenomena of the emerging world, but rather that they have been the most important issue of the world for at least the past four to five hundred years; within these conflicts we can include the Crusades, the “trans-Atlantic slave-trade, and European colonization of much of the world” (29).

In response to his critics (Foreign Affairs 1996, 67), Huntington stated that none of these scholars had come up with a better alternative to explain the conflicts of the new era. To him, the clash of civilizations remains the most powerful theory to understand disputes in the post-Cold War period.

In this context, this paper is of a crucial importance because 1) it will focus on militarized disputes of the post-Cold War period; 2) the disputes are among the states and civilizations they belong to; 3) and the study will conduct a quantitative method to analyze the clash of civilizations. Thus, this paper takes into account the weaknesses of previous studies and establishes a strong critique to Huntington’s argument.

Research design

This analysis uses the Correlates of War (COW) project’s Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). The COW provides MID starting from 1816 to 2001. As Huntington (2000, 609) claims, the clash of civilizations theory is helpful in understanding conflicts that occurred after the end of the Cold War, specifically after 1989 (Huntington 1996, 21; Huntington 2000, 609). The COW project had MID reaching up to 2001, so I chose those MID which occurred from 1989 to 2001. Although the number of disputes in this period seems to be small to test any theory, it should be quite enough to evaluate Huntington’s argument, as post-Cold War disputes were the basis of his theory. I had 620 militarized interstate disputes in total. Each dispute occurred between at least two states; one state in side A, and another on side B. The sides are coded as 0 and 1. I had information on which pair of states had disputes. Some disputes had more than two sides. I rearranged these coalitions as if they had disputes separately as dyads. For instance, if there were two states on side A and two states on side B in a dispute, than there would be four dyads involved in the same dispute.

States in these disputes belong to one of the nine civilizations, which are Western, coded as 1, Latin American (2), African (3), Islamic (4), Sinic (5), Hindu (6), Orthodox (7), Buddhist (8), and Japanese (9). Huntington (1993, 1996) does not explicitly specify the number of civilizations. In his article (1993) he mentions about “seven or eight major civilizations.” To him, Buddhism “has not been the basis of a major civilization.” (Huntington 1996, 48). Also Japan has not founded any civilization as there are no nations that share the same religion, language, or cultural values with Japanese culture. However, map 1.3 (The World of Civilizations: Post-1990) in his book (1996, 26-27) shows that there are nine civilizations in the world, including Buddhist and Japanese. I used nine civilizations as shown in the map. Russett et al (2001, 251) used eight, excluding Japanese. I wonder how they dealt with disputes that had Japan on one of the sides.

Having nine coded civilizations and many more states in the dataset, I coded all states as any of the nine civilizations they belonged to, according to map 1.3. (Huntington 1996, 26-27). I had difficulties, as did Russett et al (2001, 251), in classifying some states, because the map was not clear and Huntington did not explicitly mention them in the text. For example Nigeria, according to the map is separated into two civilizations, Islamic and African. Since religion is the most important factor that distinguishes each civilization, I have used the CIA’s World Factbook to find out the proportion of religion in Nigeria, and classified it as Islamic. India is shown as a state of both Islamic and Hindu civilizations, but I have classified it as Hindu. Sri Lanka was classified as Buddhist in relevance with Russett et al (2001). The Philippines, in my classification, go into Sinic civilization, but Russett et al (2001) classify it as Western. The most interesting problem that occurred in classification was to which civilization Israel belongs. The question is significant, as Israel has had many disputes with its neighboring states. Huntington thinks Israel is an Islamic civilization according to the map. It is ironic that Israel is considered as an Islamic civilization, first because it has nothing to do with the religion of Islam, and second because such an approach decreases empirical support for Huntington’s argument. Although it does not make sense, I classified Israel as Islamic, strictly adhering to the map.

To answer my research question I had to use civilization dyads and observe if these dyads are prone to clash or not and how frequently they have disputes. Thus, I arranged these nine civilizations in dyadic form and came up with 45 civilization dyads, extracting each one of the same dyads as 1,2 v. 2,1. A dyad is labeled 0 if the civilizations in it are the same and 1 if the civilizations are different. After arranging civilization dyads, I plugged each dispute into one of the dyads and totaled it in regard to the 45 civilization dyads. Then I arranged the number of disputes in each dyad according to the proportion to the total number of disputes.

Huntington’s main hypothesis is that civilizations have mattered and have had positive impact on disputes in the post-Cold War period. I have my doubts about his argument and hypothesize that civilizations do not matter in interstate.

Data analysis

After running my Probit model, I have found that difference in civilizations had negative impact on interstate disputes with relatively small statistical significance (10). The findings of this paper contradict what Huntington (1993, 1996) suggests as his explanation for the causes of interstate disputes in the post-Cold War era. In other words, civilization differences do not cause interstate conflicts.

There have been a total of 620 militarized interstate disputes during the 1989-2001 period, according to the COW dataset (see Table 1). Some of civilization dyads did not have any disputes, whereas other dyads conflicted several times. Huntington’s argument that different civilizations clash does not find support with the results of this study. We can see from Table 1 that 19 dyads that consist of different civilizations have not had any militarized dispute since the end the Cold War. How can Huntington explain this phenomenon on the basis of his clash of civilizations argument? Can interstate disputes be explained by civilizational differences? The answers to these questions are obviously negative. Different variables of realist and liberal theories may explain the findings, but that is not within the scope of this study.

Limitations

One of the important limitations is the absence of a clear list of civilizations and states in these civilizations. If Huntington had provided these data then there would be no dissimilarities among the scholars who tried to test his argument. Some studies used eight civilizations while others used nine. Some states, like Israel and the Philippines were placed in different civilizations in different studies. This may influence the results of these studies, as these states have had many militarized disputes.

Conclusion

This study shows that Huntington’s argument is insufficient to explain conflicts in the new world order. As he argues, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20). However, he did not carry out a quantitative analysis of the argument. He provided only case studies and offered qualitative analysis as support. Many studies, including this one, have been conducted in response to his clash of civilizations argument, with the conflicts of the post-Cold War period being analyzed quantitatively. None of these studies has found evidence to support Huntington’s argument. The finding of this study illustrates that a difference in civilization is not sufficient on its own to understand what causes conflicts these days nor does it have a positive impact on militarized disputes.

References

• Foreign Affairs. 1996. Samuel P. Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
• Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Two Civilizations and Ethnic Conflict: Islam and the West. Journal of Peace Research 38(4): 459-472.
• Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22-49
• If Not Civilizations, What? Foreign Affairs 72(4): 186-94, 1993.
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1996.
• Try Again: A Reply to Russett, Oneal & Cox. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 609-610, 2000.
• Rashid, Salim. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations? Asian Responses. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Russett, Bruce M. and John R. Oneal. 2000. A Response to Huntington. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 611-612.
• Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Inter dependence, and International Organizations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Qur’anic Perspective

At this point it would be interesting to look at what Ali Unal has to say as to why no past civilization could resist decadence and time’s corrosive power. His approach refers more to the individual and free will, rather than visible causes:1

. . . [C]ontrary to the fatalism of all other philosophies, including even Ibn Khaldun’s, the Qur’an stresses the individual’s free choice and moral conduct. Although the Divine Will, as emphasized in the Qur’an, could be regarded in some respects as the counterpart of Hegel’s Geist or as other philosophies’ absolute and irresistible laws of history, the Qur’an never denies human free will

. . . . Ibn Khaldun, Toynbee, Spengler, and other philosophers of history formed a mistaken conception of history because they did not try to discover the real dynamics of historical movements. Rather, they sought to explain the apparent causes behind a civilization’s establishment, flourishing, and decay. Whoever looks to the past will arrive at the same conclusions. But just because no community has remained at its peak this does not mean that this is an inevitable end or a determinist grip on the fate of each nation. Past civilizations collapsed because they did not heed the warnings of what had happened to earlier peoples. Accepting historical determinism causes us to nullify free will and consider the warnings and advice found in the Divine Scriptures and social sciences as useless and absurd.

This is strongly confirmed by the Qur’an in the following verses:

. . . surely God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition. (Rad 13:11)

. . . God never changes the grace He has bestowed on any people until they first change that which is in their hearts. (Anfal 8:53)

Theories concerning the collapse of civilizations

There are many theories concerning the collapse of civilizations, but of course, if a theory does not conform to reality, it is worth nothing. In this article, I will first give a brief account of widely held beliefs about the collapse of civilizations, explain the weaknesses of these theories, and then give a rationale that I believe better explains the historical data we have. As for most social problems, we will perhaps never know the truth about why societies collapse. However, the stakes at hand are so high that we must make every effort to understand, and to an extent, solve this problem.

The most common explanation for such collapses is some insurmountable natural disaster, like an epidemic, hurricane, drought, or earthquake that leads to the demise of a civilization by killing the population and crippling the economy. Widely-cited examples are the eruption of the volcano in Thera that preceded the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the malaria epidemic in the Roman Empire or earthquakes in Mesoamerican societies. These arguments, which are very appealing to our human nature, that desires simple explanations for all questions, are in fact very unsound. Societies constantly experience such disasters, yet survive them. The potato blight in Ireland in 1845 halved the island’s population but there was no cease of sociopolitical complexity as a result of the disaster. It is strange to think that the Roman Empire, which survived many disasters before, including the eruption of Pompei in AD 79, fell to malaria. We should consider that complex civilizations are designed to absorb such disasters, and they do. Just recalling the constant earthquakes in Japan added to the loss of a world war with two nuclear bombs exploding in the heart of two large cities will sufficiently prove this notion. Japanese civilization did not collapse. On the contrary, it is one of the strongest economies in today’s international arena. It is peculiar then that some civilizations are no longer able to fight such disasters. However, an act of God can certainly collectively destroy any civilization, as it did in the past like Sodom and Gomorrah. This is clearly narrated in the divine scriptures.

The other common explanations for such collapses are intruders and competition with other civilizations. The barbarian tribes, which brought the end of Rome in the fifth century, and the Mongolians that invaded Baghdad in the thirteenth century are clear examples of the intruder argument. This argument suffers from the realization that civilizations are attacked by outsiders throughout their existence, yet for some reason they cannot defend themselves near the time of their collapse. Competition with other societies however, is in principle expected to lead to growth and expansion instead of collapse. There is no end to the examples from this category too, like the competition of the Ottoman Empire with Persia, which indirectly weakened its western front. But the competition argument is both intuitively confusing and it fails to account for major cases, like the fall of the Roman Empire.

Another widely held belief about such collapses is that at a certain point in the life of a civilization a resource is depleted and the civilization that depends on this resource is prone to collapse. The Romans and the Ottomans both depended on military expansion for their economy, and when the relatively weak nations around them were engulfed or when they were barred from further expansion by geographical limitations, such as seas or large mountains, they were no longer able to use this resource. There seems to be some truth and lessons in this argument. To the uninformed, it is a very curious fact that the cradle of civilization was Mesopotamia, where modern day Iraq is. How is it possible that the superpowers of that era, the Sumerians (~3000 BC) and the Babylonians (~1000 BC) chose to live in these deserts? How is it possible that they irrigated the land, raised armies, and built world wonders in these sand dunes? These questions actually are easily answered when we realize that Mesopotamia was not a dessert in that era after all. It is now a generally accepted theory that this place had a fragile ecosystem, which was destroyed after thousands of years of environmental pressure. The potential for these lands to accommodate great civilizations was lost after this fragile ecosystem was slowly destroyed by its inhabitants.

However, the argument of resource depletion inherently asserts that the elite of a civilization facing resource depletion passively waits for the predictable demise. I will argue below that this case, although strange, is true. Another difficulty of the resource depletion argument is that in some instances of collapse resources were never depleted. The fertile lands of Mesopotamia still remained green until later than 1000 AD, while many civilizations experienced collapses. The Romans, who used irrigation as a resource, kept farming till the very end. Finally, one may wonder why societies aim at possessing a higher amount of resources all the time. Population increase is only a partial answer to this question. We can easily imagine a society whose population stays the same; it is not a far-fetched hypothesis that this society will naturally also try to increase its resources to fend off a variety of calamities it may experience, such as intruders and catastrophes. I believe herein lies an interesting rationale that brings together the mentioned theories that are flawed. To understand this, we first have to appreciate a law in economics, called the “law of diminishing returns.”

It is very rare in economics and in general social sciences that some series of observations can be identified as a “law.” However, the “law of diminishing returns,” first put forward in 1965 by Ester Boserup, is so comprehensive in its nature and explains such a variety of trends that it is now universally accepted. It goes: The return for an investment in a particular activity is great at the beginning, and then it gradually decreases. At a point, further investment brings no further benefits. At this point, the facility (a person, a group, a society, a factory) can no longer increase its returns, however much they would invest in that activity.

A simple example will clarify the law. Suppose we have a piece of land that we want to use for irrigation. In the beginning, we would just disperse seeds and wait for the crops to grow. Notice that our investment is minimal (say 1 unit of investment), and we get some food for our investment (again define this to be 1 unit of return). Then, if we want to increase the amount of crops we have, we may dig some canals for watering. It is straightforward to recognize that the canal digging is a lot harder than just dispersing seeds (say 5 times harder). However, it is again straightforward to recognize that although now we make 6 times more investment, we probably will not get 6 times the crop. Nevertheless, we want to maximize our return, so we still dig the canals. The next step would be to use motorized vehicles, which is maybe a 10 times increase in investment, but everybody will surely accept that it is not possible to get a crop that is 16 times greater than our original from the same plot of land. (Readers who may object that once the investments of canals and vehicles are made they will provide constant returns are reminded of the maintenance costs of these investments.) A further increase in returns may require genetically engineered crops that will require years of expensive research (more investment). The return per investment will always decrease for a certain type of activity, in this case irrigation.

This law is everywhere in life: If one week of studying suffices a result of 80 on one exam, in order to get 90, you need to study two more weeks. Most healthy people can run 100m in 20 seconds; to run it in 10 seconds you need years of exercising. Depending on one’s abilities (which determine an individual’s possible investment) these may even be impossible for many people. A vivid example is the heating problem in England during the nineteenth century. Heating, which was primarily carried out by burning wood from forests, with the increase in population had to be switched over to the burning of coal. The mining and distribution of coal, which is much more difficult than simply getting some wood from a nearby forest, was made even more difficult when the easily mined surface coal was rapidly depleted and deeper tunnels with lighting and airing problems had to be developed. It is intuitive why this law is in effect: Obviously, always, the easier solutions are adapted first, then the harder ones. Mining coal when you have easily available and plentiful wood is not reasonable. Consequently, we have a decline for our returns per investment.

The resources that civilizations use are no exception. A civilization that uses irrigation as a resource is bound to be limited by a certain level of return. Resource does not have to be depleted; it just cannot produce a return more than at a certain level. Another civilization that is dependent on taxation, mercenary or military expansion can achieve no more return after a certain level, no matter what adjustments it makes to its existing policy. Having said this, we can understand why a civilization that depends on a certain type of energy or resource cannot expand its influence beyond a certain level. Moreover, when energy becomes scarce, the civilization can become less agile in terms of trying new resources and new ways to produce returns, since agility and innovation mostly depend on using some of the surplus resources on strategies that will most probably yield no returns. Hence the rise of large architectural structures and many inefficient military operations are carried out during the ascent of a young civilization. These activities, which are easily buffered by the large returns that come from initial investment on the main resource of a civilization become impossibly costly later when the returns from the same investment is declining.

One last piece of the puzzle completes the rationale as to why civilizations collapse, and this piece is an easily accepted assumption: A civilization is like a dinosaur. It is large and strong, but it is adapted to the conditions into which it was born. The conditions change, however, the dinosaur cannot change its behavior. It helplessly tries to maximize the returns for the type of resource that it is adapted to use, and after a point, it simply cannot, thanks to the universal and unforgiving law of diminishing returns. At this point, another civilization, that primarily uses another superior resource, will have larger returns, build a larger army to invade the former civilization, build larger ships to cut off the trade routes, and produce goods to cripple its economy… This is just a matter of time, and it is unavoidable (see Figure 1b). The strength of the civilization in its golden age is now its weakness. In such a weakness, since there is no extra resource to fight new problems-all resource is either used up by the population, or goes toward defense costs-even a natural disaster can bring an end to a civilization that once seemed to be indestructible.

The Ottoman Empire’s strength in its rise was its perfect hierarchical organization which led to the accumulation of all power under the Sultan. Its main resource was military expansion and taxation of trade. These adaptations, which were ideal for the time between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, led to one of the most powerful empires that have ever reigned. However, by the sixteenth century, these strategies had become burdens: Due to the strong hierarchy, an intelligentsia that supported science and art as in the West could never develop. Military expansion had to stop. Taxation could no longer work since the Mediterranean Sea was no longer used for trade. The strategies were not abandoned though, instead, more investments were made in order to increase the returns, which as we saw above is a nonviable alternative. Eventually, other civilizations that used better resources brought about the end of the Empire. A similar order of events can be observed for other civilizations that collapsed. The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun of the fourteenth century likens the lives of civilizations to the natural lifespan of individuals. They are born, they grow old, and they die. In my view, a civilization does not die because it gets old; it dies because it cannot compete with a stronger civilization.

The natural question to ask is if our current civilization will collapse. From the analysis above, we can conclude that there are two reasons for the collapse of a civilization: 1) Dependence on a certain type of investment and failing to adapt to the new conditions. 2) The invention by another competitor civilization of a new type of investment with higher returns. In today’s world, both of these reasons are in some ways different than those that existed in the past. First, with the advancement of science, the current civilizations are flexible in the resources they utilize, the options are constantly evaluated, the heating in United Kingdom does not collapse when wood is depleted; instead, coal, then gas, then nuclear power is used. The return for the investment made for some utility is similar to the curve shown in Figure 1c: whenever the return for a type of investment declines, we can shift to the next resource. Second, by the immense advancement in information processing and communication, the whole world is aware of the types of investments other societies are using, and a leading civilization that follows the developments in other countries is very unlikely to be threatened by a sudden development in a rival civilization. Third, because of progress in international trade, the old sense that any other civilization is an enemy has lost its significance.

Notwithstanding these reasons, only a few decades ago, at the height of the cold war, we witnessed the possibility of the immediate collapse of our civilization. Global warming and the depletion of petrol reserves were only two of the many alarming cues that we may have turned to declining returns for our investment curve. It is imperative to remember again that the stakes are very high. The next civilization to fall may bring about the fall of the human species.

Notes

1. Tainter, J. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1988.
2. Grigg D. Ester Boserup’s theory of agrarian change: a critical review. Prog Hum Geogr. 1979; 3 (1): 64-84.
3. Unal, Ali, Islam Addresses Contemporary Issues, Kaynak, Izmir:1998, p. 142.

The various eras

The prehistoric era is considered an unknowable time inhabited by primitive and brutal humans. This era ends with the beginning of Antiquity, which saw the rise of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. However, the West downplays them, as if they somehow damage its ego and pride.

Then comes late Antiquity, the era of classical Greece and Rome, a sort of golden age during which the West was enlightened by such philosophers as Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as by beautiful artistic and literary creations. However, these people worshipped deities, did not obey any moral codes, and also had a great thirst for stories about bandits. The Greeks of this time, however, failed to comprehend the reality of the miraculous incidents in nature and so worshipped the sun, wind, fire, and forests. Rome, a civilization based upon law, categorized people into social classes varying from superior to slave. In 380, it adopted Christianity as its official religion. Antiquity ended after the empire’s division into two and the collapse of its western portion not too long after the division.

The next approximately 1,000 years are known as the medieval era. It started off by destroying Antiquity’s intellectual and artistic works and forbidding independent thought. The Christian church, after closing down Athens Plato Academy in 529, turned toward monasticism and rejected Greek philosophy. Monasteries soon gained a monopoly over education, thought, and meditation. This is why the times became dark, for the clergy monopolized science, culture, art, literature, and thought. Religion, which provides people with peace, happiness, and security, was distorted and, assuming a personalized form, became a means of torment, oppression, and harassment through the above-mentioned bans, church taxes, and the Inquisition.

During this era, which considered such moral values such as equality, justice, love, and respect outdated, people were classified as clergy, which produced nothing but confiscated and controlled everything; nobles, who owned and exploited the land and treated the peasants as serfs; peasants who worked but could only silence their hunger; and slaves. The medieval era ended with the advent of the Renaissance (rebirth or revival), which began in northern Italy in the late fourteenth century and spread north thereafter. Antiquity’s thought, art, and culture were revived, and people tried to free themselves from feudalism and church authority.

What really happened during the dark ages?

The Dark Ages are often ignored. However, this was the time when Europe rediscovered Antiquity’s accomplishments and thought due to its contacts with Muslim Spain and Byzantium. Given this reality, why does the typical timeline skip over this period, especially since it was far from dark outside of Europe? One case stands out: the Arabian peninsula, where a new religious movement (Islam) and the beginnings of its civilization had appeared by 610. In stark contrast with Europe, it proclaimed that people were obligated to seek knowledge, fight ignorance, and improve their condition in life.

Islam’s Prophet, Muhammad, accepted Judaism and Christianity as true and set about re-establishing belief in God’s Oneness. He preached the freedom of conscience and religion by declaring there is no force in religion and that people should embrace Islam only if they sincerely believed in its truth. The Qur’an rejected all humanized angels and rejected Original Sin by stating that people would be rewarded or punished only for their own deeds in the afterlife.

The security of life, goods, and honor were accepted as basic human rights, and thus guaranteed protection. All people, without exception, had specific property rights. Each person’s rights were guaranteed by being considered halal (lawful) or haram (unlawful), with various gradations in between. Social solidarity was ensured by zakat (obligatory charity) and sadaqah (voluntary charity). This also prevented the formation of social classes and any possible class hostility. Addressing humanity as O people to show their equality, the Qur’an rejected medieval Europe’s social stratification by proclaiming that superiority depended upon belief, God-consciousness, good conduct, and helping others.

In the pre-Islamic period, women were viewed as property and daughters were considered a source of shame for their fathers. Islam made them revered spouses and beloved daughters, superior to men in being mothers, and equal in obtaining property and justice. Islam sought to abolish slavery, a universal norm at the time, gradually by introducing various sanctions. First of all, it recognized slaves as full human beings who had to be treated according to the dictum Let them eat what you eat, and let them wear what you wear. Moreover, God ordered the freeing of slaves to atone for some sins.

Islam emphasized the wrongness of medieval Europe’s social stratification by stating that everybody was equal before law. The principle of freedom from obligation, which states that everybody is essentially innocent until proven guilty, was also established. All of these practices, which have existed from the first day of Islam, have not been cancelled just because many Muslims have not observed them.

Conclusion

While Europe remained in the dark on all of the above issues, the sun of Islam was beginning to illuminate many other areas of the world. Thus, humanity’s progress toward real civilization was led by Islam during an era that was supposedly dark. As Islamic history shows, that classification betrays some obvious personal or civilizational bias.

Europe’s Dark Age was a time of great intellectual ferment in the Islamic world. Many philosophical, mathematical, medical, astronomical, and medical works produced by classical Greece and Rome, as well as India and other civilizations, was translated into Arabic by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Among them were the works of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Hippocrates, Euclid, Galinos, Ptolemy, and Archimedes. Such translations had a major impact upon Europe when they finally reached its shores, for they were instrumental in starting the Renaissance.

The present division of history into certain eras is based upon a Western view of history and what is important. The church rejected Antiquity’s accomplishments and caused it to be forgotten in Europe for many centuries. However, religion cannot be condemned for this, for the people who did such things deviated from its teachings. While Europe was lost in darkness, Muslims were busy creating an Islamic civilization that first enlightened their own lands and then spread outwards Spain (Andalusia). Muslim Spain eventually became a bridge between the Islamic world and Christian Europe.

Greek civilization established the beautiful, Romans established the law, and the Semites contributed religion. The Chinese actualized the useful, India gave humanity its imagination and mysticism, and Europe gave science. Islamic civilization assumed its rightful place among the world’s civilizations by exhibiting an intrinsic and original style in areas such as thought, science, art, culture, and literature. Such a magnificent civilization, if it is to be divided into eras, should be divided according to its own history, and not by the West’s criteria. Just as the West arose again, thanks to Islamic civilization, so will the Islamic world rise again, God willing.

These terrorist attacks show that the perpetrators share none of the aims of Islam, such as spreading Islam peacefully. You cannot spread Islam to other people by bombing them. Is there anything in Islam which legitimizes this terrorist attack? Certainly not! Jihad is a totally different concept, and can be declared only when Islam has to be defended. But Islam does not have to be defended in America, for Islam is already acknowledged here as one of the three monotheist religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. This is not a superficial acknowledgment”6 million Muslims now live in America. Islam is not an imported religion, and this terrorist attack has nothing to do with American Muslims. On the contrary, it was perpetrated by outsiders having political”not religious”motivations.

The goals for which they are striving are not Islamic, but probably are related to the current political goals of certain people who manipulate Islam to legitimize their quest. I do not agree with Samuel Huntingtons well-known œclash of civilizations theory, in which Islam is approached as an enemy to the West and must be destroyed. On the other hand, the media (especially, those who supply the information and constantly oppose Islam) are striving to maintain an artificial adversarial sensitivity against Islam.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict underlies the clash of civilizations and, in a way, is the primary source of all these events. Mutual terror has been experienced throughout the 54 years of this conflict. Palestinians retaliated with counter-terror campaigns to Israel’s terror at the governmental level. This has affected millions of people not only in terms of religion but also in terms of national-political status. Israel attacks Palestinians not because they are Muslims but because they are Arab Palestinians. The fact that 20 percent of all Palestinians are Christians shows that this is not a religiously driven conflict. Nayef Hawatmeh and George Habash are leaders of Palestinian Democratic Public Front and are both Orthodox Christians. They began organizing suicidal attacks before HAMAS was even founded. The foremost significant supporters of Palestinians are Edward

Said and Albert Hourani, who are Protestant Christians and, respectively, prominent figures in literature and history.

The organizational formation of the terrorist group that launched the September 11th attacks deserves serious consideration. It seems that 60 to 70 people were actively involved; 19 of them are dead. But what about those who probably provided logistical support? How did they carry out their role unnoticed? For such an organization, there needs to be a mastermind, and I do not think that Bin Laden is the most likely candidate.

All types of terrorism, regardless of reason, are evil. While protesting terrorism, however, we should not ignore the reasons. America has to delve into the reasons and the roots of these events. It has to cast far-reaching look and search for real reasons, instead of dealing with symptoms. If America uses its power not to exercise sovereignty over others but to create a more peaceful world, this would serve its own interests. In addition, Muslims would benefit the most from it.

They did this within their own families as well, developing parent-child relationships, child rearing, values and beliefs, and other systems. If a society cannot develop one or more socially acceptable systems by which to raise its young people, its continued existence is called into question.

Like everything else, systems are dynamic and evolving. A major ingredient for a successful system-wide change is sufficient time to adapt. We hear of animal species dying out and indigenous peoples losing their culture because they could nol adapt fast enough. However, some people are impatient with the pace of change. They want to speed it up, by force if necessary. One man enforced rapid national change through decree and enforced it with raw power: Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. The results, nol surprisingly, were beyond belief.

Other Utopians, among them Plato and Sir Thomas More, confined their utopias to books. Ironically, a close reading of their texts or those of the self-proclaimed utopian societies that have emerged probably would encourage people to flee from them. Why? Because they are grounded in suppressing individuality in the name of pursuing “Ihe greater good”-usually at any cost. But what else is a man or a woman if not an individual? To insist upon being an individual under the Khmer Rouge literally meant instant death. We can only speculate how the inhabitants of Plato’s or Sir Thomas More’s ideal societies would deal with non-conformists.

In the scientific realm, scientists are devising artificial systems to improve our quality of life. One example is the electronic nose, which can be used to detect spoiled food and air quality, assist doctors and nurses in medical diagnoses, and help the military clear land mines. Another example is that of superconductivity. Using various combinations of elements, wires, and temperatures, scientists erect elaborate structures that result in supercomputers, mag-lev trains, SQUIDS (used to study the brain), particle accelerators, and other devices

One artificial system that has spread like wildfire in many countries is e-mail. Once the preserve of the American government and military, it is now an established part of many people’s and businesses’ daily routine. Although far from perfect, the current system seems to function rather well.

And then there are the more abstract systems that shape a culture: religion, one’s conception of how and why the universe functions, why things were created, what being civilized means, and how one can live a moral life. Some civilizations define themselves and are defined by-their religion. During the Middle Ages, Christian Europe applied this standard to the Muslim world. The resulting stereotypes and misunderstandings, despite calls for mutual understanding and acceptance, are alive today and color all relations between these two civilizations.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and, as always, look forward to your comments.

Cultural diversity has two vital benefits. First, individuals from different groups and cultures get to know each other, which engenders respect and consideration for each one’s beliefs, values, and ways of life. Achieving such a goal is a must for countries like America, which hosts many different cultures and groups. Such an understanding is becoming crucial for all nations, even for quite homogenous ones, as all are quickly becoming dwellers of the same global village. Humanity needs examples of successful multicultural societies. The second benefit is the exchange of knowledge and experience. This article elaborates on the second benefit.

Today, in many American-made movies and television serials (such as Kung Fu), we see a wise Asian man who is always calm, never panics, and brings such unique, humanitarian solutions to problems that the Americans on the scene are amazed. Although these are not real stories, they give the flavor of possible benefits to be derived from exploring different perspectives and philosophies.

The fact that all individuals living in the vast variety of societies found on our planet are human beings is often overlooked by individuals, communities, and even social science professionals, depending on the rate of their self-containedness. All individuals living in different societies are, without doubt, human beings; the differences separating them are merely external elements. Thus everyone, regardless of his or her society, experiences common problems; only the context changes. For example, a beggar and a king both feel anger at times. The beggar’s anger may lead him to hit his wife, whereas the king’s anger may cause him to engulf the nation in war. Another analogy is that of a pickpocket to a computer hacker illegally transferring funds.

Throughout history, human cultures and groups have dealt with the same characteristics and problems as we, the people welcoming a new millennium, are dealing with now. As contemporary cultures reflect inherited perspectives and philosophies, centuries-old cultures and civilizations may be invaluable resources for finding new points of view and approaches to our problems.

The emphasis placed on such a cultural exchange by both American individuals and institutions at all levels is not as great as that which has been placed on other, but less important, issues. For example, a typical American secondary school student’s knowledge of world geography and foreign languages has long been inferior to that of his or her European counterpart. This indicates a lack of interest toward the rest of the world.

The same indifference can be observed in American nightly news programs, even on national television channels. For example, the “World Report” news programs usually give domestic news (unless there is a war going on in which America is heavily involved). Might such an ethnocentric view of the world stemming from being the sole superpower be responsible for this attitude?

Sometimes people living in a system, even a well-functioning system, cannot solve their social and individual problems because they cannot raise themselves above the flow of events. The most frequently used tool to solve any problem is power, especially if it is abundant and readily available. Power often is seen as the best shortcut to the solution due to the deceiving ease of its exertion, which also allows its user to ignore or to not consider its potentially serious side effects.

The power applied may be physical, economic, military, or technological, depending on the nature of the problem. However, its exercise is not always the key to the solution. A mighty lion caught in a hunter’s net should have the modesty to request help from a tiny mouse, for the latter’s sharp teeth may work where the lion’s devastating paws cannot. One should have the wisdom to know a gallon of gas cannot attract that which can be attracted by a teaspoonful of honey.

A simple but enlightening example of how different perspectives can help to solve problems is given below. During the heated negotiations between two political parties for a coalition in Turkey, a simple but totally satisfactory suggestion by a Turkish newspaper columnist attracted my attention. The two parties, having an almost equal number of representatives in Parliament, could not share the ministries, for ministries have varying degrees of political weight. The columnist’s suggestion was not inspired by a similar case from a contemporary democracy, but from a parable describing King Solomon’s approach to a similar problem: Two heirs could not agree on how to divide their inheritance equally, because they could not agree on the value of the items to be inherited. King Solomon suggested that one heir divide the inheritance into two equal halves, after which the other heir would have the first choice. Thus, an ancient parable offered a practical solution to a conflict in a contemporary democracy. Whether his suggestion was considered or not is beyond our concern here.

One can find books of ancient and contemporary philosophers and different cultures in bookstores, but who reads them? The general public, especially the youth, should be made aware of these resources and directed to make use of humanity’s historical experience. For example, various herbs used in some parts of the world for centuries to treat specific illnesses are now preferred over drugs developed in laboratories, for they are all-natural, non-addictive, and have no side effects. Obviously, cultures and civilizations have much more to offer each other than herbs. I wish that Americans would look sincerely for the wisdom that different civilizations and cultures have to offer.

Note: Since this article is intended to reflect a broad perspective, I gave no specifics about the methodology to realize the goals indicated and no thorough examples. Such examples in different fields, along with their methodologies, can serve as the content of separate articles.

Technology is the tool of civilization, and for Islamic civilization to have been such a leading force in the world for several centuries, it must have been based on important technological achievements.

The blossoming of science and culture in Islamic civilization was the result of the increasing quality of material life in its cities. The material prosperity, the varied local industries, the local and international trade, and the flourishing science and culture, in these cities, were all linked together, and would have been impossible without a developing technology. If Islam was the force behind the rise of cities, as is frequently asserted, then it was also the force behind all aspects of the prosperity of these cities and hence the technological efforts associated with it.

In addition to the positive effects of the ideology of Islam as a religion, Islam achieved a unique effect in the history of mankind. It united the civilizations and populations of the vast expanse of territory which lies between the borders of China and the Atlantic. This area comprised the lands of those ancient civilizations which were also the seat of later civilizations in the Near East, such as the Hellenistic. It remained under one government during the first centuries of Islam. Moreover, even after the rise of various dynasties, the region benefited from the cultural unity Islam provided. Islam abolished the barriers which had isolated these countries from each other, so that the whole area now had one religious tradition and one literary and scientific language. The cultural unity also ensured free passage and free trade from China in the east to Spain in the west. Scientists and men of letters were free to travel, and crossed vast distances to meet other scholars. Moreover, although the Umayyads in Spain did not acknowledge the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, there always exited links between Spain and the Eastern territories under Islamic rule.

TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY

The traditional view of Western historians is that European culture is the direct descendant of the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. According to this theory, the works of classical authors–mostly in Latin, but some in Greek–were preserved by the Church during the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, to re-emerge as a potent source of inspiration in the later middle Ages and the Renaissance. Few would deny the strong influence of classical literature on European thought. Until recently, the works of Homer, Thucydides and the Greek dramatists, of Tacitus, Virgil and Horace, to name but a few, were part of the cultural background of every educated European. In science, however, the situation is very different. During the sixth century after the Hijra (twelfth century CE) the writings of such scholars as al-Farabi, al-Ghazali, al-Farghani (Afragamus), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) were translated into Latin, and became known and were esteemed in the West. The works of Aristotle, soon to become the predominant influence on European thought, were translated from the Arabic together with the commentaries of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd to the medieval Europeans. These commentaries were as important as the works of Aristotle himself in forming European scientific and philosophical thought. Many other scientific works, which had originally been translated from Greek into Arabic centuries earlier, were now translated into Latin. However, most of these were from the Hellenistic period, and though they were written in Greek, their authors came from all the countries of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. It seems, therefore, that some European writers, being deeply appreciative of the literary masterpieces of Greece and Rome, have been led to believe that Western civilization, in all its aspects, was based upon Greek and Roman foundations. This is not the case with science and technology.

Charles Singer has discussed some of the points already touched upon. The Graeco-Roman heritage was built upon the great civilizations of the Near East and, furthermore, the major achievements in science and technology that are called Hellenistic and Roman were mainly Near Eastern achievements due to the scholars and artisans of Egypt and Syria. The pre-Islamic civilizations from Spain to Central Asia and northern India were inherited by Islam. Under the influence of Islam and the Arabic language, the science and technology of these regions was developed and improved. Referring to the Eurocentrism of Western historians, Singer wrote: ‘Europe, however, is but a small peninsula extending from the great land masses of Afrasia. This is indeed its geographical status and this, until at least the thirteenth century CE, was generally also its technological status.’ In skill and inventiveness during most of the period CE 500 to 1500, Singer continues: ‘the Near East was superior to the West… For nearly all branches of technology the best products available to the West were those of the Near East… Technologically, the West had little to bring to the East. The technological movement was in the other direction.’ We shall now indicate (see, S. Charles, et al., A History of Technology, 8 vols, Oxford, 1954) how this technology transfer occurred, and give some examples of the transfer of ideas and techniques from Islam to the West.

The adoption by Europe of Islamic techniques is reflected by the many words of Arabic derivation that have passed into the vocabularies of European languages. In English these words have often, but not always, entered the language from Italian or Spanish. To cite but a few examples: in textiles–muslin, sarsanet, damask, taffeta, tabby; in naval matters–arsenal, admiral; in chemical technology–alembic, alcohol, alkali; in paper–ream; in foodstuffs–alfalfa, sugar, syrup, sherbet; in dyestuffs–saffron, kermes; in leather-working–Cordovan and Morocco. As one would expect, Spanish is particularly rich in words of Arabic origin, especially in connection with agriculture and irrigation. We have, for example, tahona for a mill, acena for a mill or water-wheel, acequia for an irrigation canal.

Many Arabic works on scientific subjects were translated into Latin in the later middle Ages. The translation bureau in Toledo in the twelfth century CE, where hundreds of such works were rendered into Latin, is a notable example of this activity. There was, unfortunately, nothing comparable in the field of technology, in which direct translations from Arabic were extremely rare. About CE 1277, in the court of Alfonso X of Castile, a work in Spanish entitled Li-bros del Saber de Astronomia was compiled under the direction of the King, with the declared objective of making Arabic knowledge available to Spanish readers. It includes a section on time keeping, which contains a weight-driven clock with a mercury escapement. We know from other sources that such clocks were constructed by Muslims in Spain in the eleventh century , that is about 250 years before the eight-driven clock appeared in northern Europe. About CE 1277 the secrets of Syrian glass-making were communicated to Venice under the terms of a treaty made between Bohemond VII, titular prince of Antioch, and the Doge. Such direct examples of technology transfer are still comparatively rare but more will undoubtedly come to light as research proceeds.

For the moment, we can indicate several points in space and time where the exchange of ideas took place. Relations between Christian Europe and the Islamic world were not always hostile. Muslim rulers were often enlightened men and tolerant towards their Christian subjects, an attitude enjoined upon them by the precepts of the Qur’an. Furthermore, commercial considerations led to the establishment of communities of European merchants settled in Byzantium, where they made contact with Swedish traders traveling down the Dnieper. There were particularly close commercial ties between Fatimid Egypt and the Italian town of Amalfi in the fourth and fifth centuries AH (tenth and eleventh centuries CE). The ogival arch, an essential element of Gothic architecture, entered Europe through Amalfi–the first church to incorporate such arches being built at Monte Casino in CE 1071. Some historians think that the influence of the Crusades on European culture has probably been exaggerated, but transmission certainly occurred, as we have seen in the case of Syrian glass-making. Certainly, however, the mast fruitful exchanges took place in the Iberian Peninsula, where over many centuries the generally tolerant rule of the Umayyad caliphs and their successors permitted friendly relationships between Muslims and Christians. Muslim operations in agriculture, irrigation, hydraulic engineering, and manufacture were an integral part of everyday life in the southern half of the peninsula, and passed from Spain into Italy and northern Europe. These transmissions were not checked by the Reconquista. Indeed, they were probably accelerated, since the Christians took over the Muslim installations and maintained them in running order in the ensuing centuries. The Muslim irrigation systems with their associated hydraulic works and water-raising machines remained as the basis for Spanish agriculture and were in due course transferred to the New World. Other installations passed into Christian hands. Industrial plants, such as the paper mill at Jativa near Valencia, were taken over. Two large water-clocks on the banks of the Tagus at Toledo were found by the Christians where they continued in operation for at least fifty years. These few examples must suffice as indicators of the passage of Muslim ideas into Europe.

CONCLUSION

The contributions of Islamic civilizations to science, notably mathematics and astronomy, have long been recognized. The application of this scientific expertise to technology, however, has been neglected. The story of Islamic technology is far from complete. Research in this area is still at an early stage and, notwithstanding what has been published so far, contributions by Islam to science and technology have yet to be fully revealed. During the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries, Western research into Islamic science yielded outstanding results, but only after a long period of silence has that interest now been revived. There is still a need for additional co-ordinated research if significant results are to be obtained. The field of alchemy/chemistry and chemical technology is a case in point. At present this is an almost totally neglected area in which few seem to have taken even a slight interest since the admirable research several decades ago of Kraus, Ruska, Stapleton and Wiedemann.

(For more information, see, A. Y. al-HASSAN and D. R. HILL, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988.)