THESIS
2004
xiii, 220 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm
Abstract
Samuel P. Huntington's thesis the 'Clash of Civilizations' has inaugurated scholarly debates on the
new global order since the early 1990s. These debates were revitalized after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Throughout the development of both international relations and academic debates, intellectual focus became more focused on the dichotomized relationship between Islam and the West. More importantly, the confrontation began to escalate to the civilizational level, namely, purported conflict between 'civilized' versus 'barbaric', liberal versus undemocratic and so on. Rather than viewing Islam as a static entity by
observing its attributes, this thesis suggests that only by putting Islamic civilization within the wider context of t...[
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Samuel P. Huntington's thesis the 'Clash of Civilizations' has inaugurated scholarly debates on the
new global order since the early 1990s. These debates were revitalized after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Throughout the development of both international relations and academic debates, intellectual focus became more focused on the dichotomized relationship between Islam and the West. More importantly, the confrontation began to escalate to the civilizational level, namely, purported conflict between 'civilized' versus 'barbaric', liberal versus undemocratic and so on. Rather than viewing Islam as a static entity by
observing its attributes, this thesis suggests that only by putting Islamic civilization within the wider context of the human civilizational process can the changing faces of Islam be identified and comprehended. Through the research design with typology of Muslims in terms of spatial mobility conceptualized by Islamicscapes, an ethnographic study is on the Muslim Diaspora in the West. This thesis presents the unintended consequence of terrorist attacks to the formation of a new Muslim consciousness as the cultural bearer and global spokesperson of civilized Islamic
modernity, namely Homo Islamicus at a microscopic level. This also serves as a foundation of the long neglected emergence of a civilized Islam as a pacification movement, namely Pax Islamica at a
macroscopic level, one that has been paradoxically globalized by Islamic fundamentalism in the
post-September 11 era. This thesis argues that to have a proper understanding of Islamic modernity one must look at its progressive as well as destructive components. Islam as a civilization could then be mapped within the framework of 'Multiple Modernities' and contemporary Islamic civilization could be conceptualized as one that wears a Janus face, namely,
a militant face and a civilized face constituting two sides of the same coin. To use a dramaturgical term, civilized Islamic modernity is now attempting to move to the centre-stage of the global theatre, elicited by the historical axis of September 11. Derived from this outlook, it urges one to rethink the existing holistic political agenda of Post-September 11 global governance and social research orientations in academic inquiry. For instance, while solely emphasizing the manifested
phenomenon by putting resources to defeat the proliferation of Islamic terrorism, the thesis
proposes that attention should be given to anticipate the potential influence of the latent challenge
of civilized Islam and its re-enchantment process in the global public sphere.
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