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Clash Of Civilizations: Conflict between Islamic Fundamentalists and Western Culture

Clash Of Civilizations: Conflict between Islamic Fundamentalists and Western Culture

 

In this conflicting times, when different cultures and ideologies are at clash with each other. Nationalism is constantly rising throughout the world and has been used by the politicians around the world as weapon to maintain their power stature. 

While the histories are getting manipulated only to achieve political agendas and to turn people chauvinist to a extent, where they no longer able to see anything beyond nationalism. 

This is not something new as it was already predicted by Samuel P. Huntington in his thesis, Clash of Civilizations, that the future world post Cold War will witness the conflict between different cultural and religious identities and the future war would not be fought between the countries but between the cultures. 

Because since the start of Cold war from 1947, the world politics was pretty much occupied between the politics between the two hegemonic giants, The USSR and USA, and was all about making alliances to safeguard their so called national interest.   


After the fall of communism in 1991, The erstwhile Soviet Union disintegrated into different nationalist central Asian and Eastern European Sovereign states and not only made USA the sole Hegemon of the World but also marked the return of Russia as the legitimate successor of Soviet Union and as key global player.

 The world order changed from Bi-polar to Uni-polar and countries started to make a significant changes in their foreign policies to deal with this new change in the global politics. 

fall of communism in 1991



The conflicts ignited in South Asia and middle east during cold war, remained unsettled and continued to haunt the world post cold war. 

The Islamic religious and extremist ideologies that were used to motivate the youth of south Asia, mainly the students of religious institutes aka Madrasas, and middle east to join armed movement against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the withdrawal of Soviet Force from Afghanistan, those different groups of Islamic fighter merged and came to know as Talibans. 

Who later fought against local Afghan groups in civil war and got hold of a major part of the country and established their own state know as Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan. Where they established Shariah, the Islamic code of laws, and enforced strict so called Islamic principles in their newly established state. 

This newly formed state of Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, then became a role model for all Islamic fundamentalists and extremists, who hailed it for enforcing Shariaah and the Islamic principles.

Afghanistan Talibans



However, after 9/11 and US led NATO invasion of Afghanistan further fueled the conflict and bloody war continued till this date. 

This US invasion and the Taliban insurgency that continues till this date not only resulted in thousands of deaths but also displaced millions of Afghans from their homeland. 

The US and Europe became new enemies for the Islamic fundamentalist, who took this invasion as attack on their religious ideals,Islamic ideology and culture. 

The incident of 9/11 and the events that followed it brought fundamental Islamic religious and cultural identities in direct conflict with Western culture and society.

US led NATO invasion of Afghanistan


The instability in the middle east after the Arab spring, allowed different armed religious groups to emerge and fight to get hold over different areas of those war torn states. 

Most of the middle East has become a battle ground of different armed groups fighting either among themselves or with the state forces to assert their dominance over the different parts of those states. As most of those religious armed groups fighting to establish their own Islamic states in those states just like Talibans in Afghanistan.

 Most prominent of those armed group is ISIS, which holds a significant land mass of Syria and Iraq and aspiring to extend their boundaries through violence. The conflict between Islamist Fundamentalist and Western culture and society that started from Afghanistan, has now extended to a large portion of Middle East and is far from over.

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