Who's afraid of the Big Bad Muslim?

I'm three weeks late in noticing and responding to this essay by Fouad Ajami, but hey - as soon as someone starts paying me to blog, I'll start covering the headlines. ;-)

The essay is about Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" idea, and how Ajami was wrong to doubt it. Basically, Ajami buys Huntington's notion that the world's major civilizations (Western, Islamic, Chinese, etc.) are semipermanent in nature, and that these civilizations will come into conflict more in the coming century than in the past two. The central piece of support for this notion, of course, is the current "clash" between a young vigorous Islamic civilization and a shrinking, weakened Western one. Man the battlements, white Christian soldiers, and replace your wives' birth control pills with Viagra!

I just want to say how wrong I think this whole business is. Yes, "civilizations" exist, in that cultures vary by area and people do pay attention to ethnic identity. Can you draw dark Number 2 pencil lines around them? No (as evidenced by the fact that Huntington arbitrarily includes Korea, but not Japan, as part of Chinese civilization). Do they clash? Sure. One example of this was when European countries conquered a lot of other places a century or two ago.

But it's worth noting that most conflicts take place within civilizations, not between them. From 1500-1945, even as colonialism raged, Europeans spent most of their time and energy killing other Europeans. It's been the same thing more recently - East Asians killing other East Asians in the 20s and 30s, Southeast Asians killing other Southeast Asians in the 60s and 70s, Africans killing other Africans in the 90s and 00s, etc. (This is just Noah's Law of Competition in action; similarity, not difference, breeds conflict.)

And it's the same with Islamic civilization today. Despite the big exception of 9/11, Islamic terrorists have succeeded mostly in killing other Muslims (resulting, predictably, in the drop in Muslim support for terrorism). Most of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have been Muslims killed by other Muslims. Yes, the West has a hand in those wars, but it would be wrong to say it's Them vs. Us. In Sudan, in Yemen, in Pakistan, and in Lebanon, it's Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

Huntington, to his credit, attributes Muslim violence not to civilizational factors, but to the youth bulge in Muslim countries. I'd go a bit further than he would, actually - Saudi oil money and support for worldwide radicalism probably had something to do with it too. But both those factors are on the wane - fertility is plunging in much of the Muslim world, and the Islamic "charities" that funnel petrodollars to madrassas have been severely curtailed. The "clashes within civilizations" in Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia didn't last forever, and - if those fertility rates keep falling - Islamic violence will follow imperialism, fascism, communism, etc. into the history books. And then Ajami will write another essay saying how wrong he was about being wrong.