Abstract
The concept and the reality of a “War of Ideas” being waged within a new Cold War predate 9/11. The former bipolar East-West conflict between competing systems has been replaced by a new polarization. The new one relates not only to the rivalry between secular and religious value systems, but foremost to the political order both rest on. This cultural-religious rivalry is twenty-first-century inter-civilizational conflict in world politics over political order and the values that undergird it. This conflict is not between the religions of Islam and Christianity as such, but instead to the combination of these world religions with politics. I call this “return of the sacred” to the political sphere “religionized politics,” which means a combination of a constructed religion and real politics. Activists of “political religion” believe themselves to act in a war of ideas as the “defenders of God.”4
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular Nation State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Among the sources of the War of Ideas in world politics one finds politicized religion in the context of post-bip olarity; on this subject, see Pippa Noris and Roland Inglehart, Sacred and Secular. Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Eric Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International System Today (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
On this term, see B. Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Democratic Pace and Euro-Islam vs. Globaljihad (New York: Koutledge, 2008).
Bruce Lawrence, The Defenders of God (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).
The journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions deals with political religion and publishes important articles on this subject. Also the Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism/HAIT, based at the University of Dresden/Germany, conducted a research project on “political religion” that resulted in the publication of the following book: Gerhard Besier/ Hermann Lübbe, eds, Politische Peligion und Peligionspolitik (Goettingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2005).
B. Tibi, “Jihadism and Inter-Civilizational Conflict,” in Shahram Akbarzadeh and Fethi Mansouri, eds, Islam and Political Violence. Muslim Diaspora and Padicalism in the West (London: Taures, 2007), pp. 39–64
Daniel Philpott, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics, vol. 55, no. 1 (October 2002), pp. 66–95.
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim fi al-tariq [Signposts along the Road] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 13th legal edition, 1989), pp. 201–202.
Roxanne Euben, The Enemy in the Mirror. Islamic Fundamentalism (Princeton/NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)
David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 202–206.
John Kelsay, Islam and War. A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 117
John Kelsay, Arguing thejust War in Islam (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
For more details, see David Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace. The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Avon Books, 1989)
Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1979).
On these repercussions, see Adeed Dawisha, “1967 and After,” in Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton/NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)
B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998
See Graham Fuller, The Center of the Universe. The Geopolitics of Iran (Boulder/Col.: Westview Press, 1991).
B. Tibi, Islam’s Predicament with Modernity. Religious Preform and Cultural Change (New York: Koutledge, 2009).
Islam and Islaniism are different issues analyzed by B. Tibi, “Between Islam and Islaniism,” in Tami A. Jacoby and Brent Sasley, eds, Predefining Security in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 62–82.
See the contribution by the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta in 2002, Ralph Boyce, U.S. Foreign Policy. On our place in the community of nations, see Karlina Helmantia and Irfan Abubakar, eds, Dialogue in the World Disorder (Jakarta: AIN-Hidayatollah Islamic State University, 2004), pp. 9–24
For a criticism, see B. Tibi, “Islamist Parties. Why they Can’t be Democratic,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 19, no. 3 (2008), pp. 43–48
B. Tibi, “Turkey’s Islamist Danger. Islamists Approach Europe,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 1 (2009), pp. 47–54
Zeyno Baran, “Turkey Divided,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 17 (2008), pp. 55–69
The following books on Egypt provide reason to worry, because they are based on a misconception about the Movement of the Muslim Brothers (MB). They also muster U.S. support for this Islamist movement and indirectly help it to come to power: Raymond Baker, Islam without Fear. The New Islamists in Egypt (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)
Bruce Rutherford, Egypt after Mubarak (Princeton/NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Caroline Fourest, Brother Tariq. The Doublespeak of Tariq Pamadan (New York: Encounter Books, 2008)
Melanie Phillips, Londonistan (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), pp. 174–175.
Graham Fuller, Sense of Siege. The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Boulder/Col: Westview Press, 1995).
Myron Weiner, Global Migration Crisis (New York: Harper & Collins, 1995).
On this tradition of Islamic rationalism, see Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarahi, Avicenna and Averroes on Intellect. Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Mina, and Theories of Human Intellect (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
On the Hellenization of Islam, see William M. Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: University Press, 1997)
See the excellent translation of al-Madina al-Fadila by Michael Walzer, ed., Al-Farabi on the Perfect State. Abu Nasr al-Farabi: Mabaai ara’ ahl al-maaina al-faaila (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Leslie Lipson, The Ethical Crises of Civilizations. Moral Meltaown or Advance? (London: Sage, 1993), pp. 62–63.
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Arab Islamic Philosophy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 120–130.
On religionized politics, see my chapter in Efraim Inbar and Hillel Frisch, eds., Padical Islam and International Security (New York: Koutledge, 2008), pp. 11–37
Kelsay, Islam and War, p. 117 See also Kelsay’s, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
On this issue, see the classic by Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, new edition (New York: Koutledge, 1998)
Hasan al-Sharqawi, al-Muslimun, Ulama wa Hukama (Muslims as Ulema and Wise Men) (Cairo: Mu’ssasat Mukhtar, 1987), p. 12.
See the parts on “Remaking Politics” and “Remaking the World,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds, Funaamentalisms and the State. Pemaking Polities, Economies and Militance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Eric D. Patterson and John Gallagher
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tibi, B. (2009). Inter-civilizational Conflict between Value Systems and Concepts of Order: Exploring the Islamic Humanist Potential for a Peace of Ideas. In: Patterson, E.D., Gallagher, J. (eds) Debating the War of Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101982_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101982_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38209-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10198-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)