Al-Jazirah

SINCE Samuel Huntington›s Clash of Civilizations hypothesis, which was published in the Foreign Affairs Journal in 1993 and was released in book form shortly afterward, the entire world has been debating about the nature of religious and cultural conflicts going to be fought among the peoples on earth.

Huntington›s hypothesis posits that human beings, following the Cold War of the 1960s, started to rediscover their cultural identity and attach importance to it greater than to anything else.

The author shed light on figures from the recent and old history who represent important cultural significance to their peoples. He said human beings who search for their cultural identity and reattach themselves to the ethnicities they belong to need enemies who can make them see how different they are from others.

The theme of the book highlights the hypothesis that cultural identities and the underlying religious concepts of civilizations will constitute dangerous patterns of conflicts and clashes between counties and within countries.

This is what we see on the ground today with regard to many of the cultural conflicts going on in different parts of the world and within specific religious communities. The sectarian conflicts between the Sunni Muslims and Shiites and the ongoing fight between mainstream Muslims and the Daesh or other extremist groups are only a few glaring examples.

Even people belonging to other monotheistic religions fight among themselves to ensure their presence and cement their influence.

However, this is not a major problem. The real problem starts when a certain culture believes that it is the perfect one and others should follow suit. This is where conflicts arise.

The history of mankind saw many destructive wars and people learned the realities the hard way. Let us not forget the fact that World War II claimed the lives of more than 66 million people. We should all today work together and put aside our differences, racism and extremism, which some media channels try to stir up. We should all come together to protect our planet from extremist beliefs and ideologies.