The Misguided Clash: A Muslim Rebuttal to Huntington’s Civilizational Divide

The Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory represents one side of the coin only, there is a dire necessity to look at this debate of the civilizational clash from the Muslim’s point of view. To analytically explore, how the Clash of Civilizations theory is being perceived and responded by the Muslim societies, particularly through the Constructivist lens of International Relations. The Clash of Civilizations has been a prominent debate in the post-Cold War world in the context of understanding the international relations, yet there always has been a need to identify and fill a critical research gap in grasping the perspective of the Muslim world towards this theory. This gap overlooks the significance of efforts towards cooperation and peace between the Muslim world and the West, further intensifying the misconceptions and aggravating the tensions, leaving room for stereotypes, islamophobia, and inter-civilizational divide. In addition to this, the Huntington’s theory also oversimplifies the notion of diversity existing within the civilization by tagging it as a monolithic entity described solely on religious grounds, in turn, paving way for the ‘us vs them’ divide between the Western and the Muslim world. The qualitative methods approach is employed to collect insightful data on the topic of the misguided clash: A Muslim rebuttal to Huntington’s civilizational divide. This paper is an attempt to explore the Clash of Civilizations theory from the Muslim perspective.