Clash of Civilizations?

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The title reminds me of Samuel Huntington's belief that the world is divided into civilizations - Islam and the rest, in short and their clash is inevitable. It is unfortunate when we fall prey to such a belief because in doing so we convince the one who is different from us in terms of religion or belief that we are worthy of fighting with, whether we are the so-called Westerners being threatened by "others" or Muslims being attached by "foreigners" or any other such division.

However, what I like about the internet technology is the ability to debate and to continue the debate on literally a 24 hour. An interesting debate arose with the Pakistan banning Facebook and Draw Muhammad Day issue that has come to light recently. Here are some snippets from the debate.

A comment and my reply from Project Carousel:
Arzoo says:
May 22, 2010 at 11:32 am (Edit)

It was not only Cartoonists but this time the platform that backed them is more important it was facebook in 2006 during the danish cartoons controversy most of the world leaders had condemned that act but this time instead of Page reported almost million times facebook administration never took any action Violating its own terms of service
Divide between West and Muslims was always there because of two different Ideologies we believe in and conflict between these two is destined

FizaUK says:
May 22, 2010 at 12:46 pm (Edit)

...I would however refrain from propagating ideas of two different ideologies destined to conflict. Whether any one is right or wrong in saying that, the propagation of such view points does not help the diversity of the world we live in whether its Muslims living in Europe, in USA, in Australia or in Muslim countries being attached by foreign armies. It just reiterated the non-Muslim belief that this ideology believes in the destiny of conflict and justifies their attitude towards Muslims.

You raise a good point about Facebook violating its own terms and services…


On a similar note, discomaulvi has written an excellent analysis of the same debate on his blog:

He wrote:

Dear Arzoo:

I agree with you that the thought of anyone disrespecting our Prophet (SAW) should make your blood boil and make you want to chop his head off. This should be our level of Iman that we love Allah and his Rasool above all even ourselves.

I however disagree that we as individuals should go about chopping heads. This is the duty of the Khalifa to impose such a punishment and as an individual or group of muslims we have no legal Islamic right to harm anyone.

While the incident of the Jew you mentioned may have happened, the order was given by the Amir-ul-Momineen of that time (the Prophet (SAW)) and Omar (RA) would have not been right if he ....


Read the full article here


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May 24, 2010 at 4:47 AM
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