The Clash Of Values

Much of the Middle East and North Africa still appears to be in a transitional period set in motion by the 2011 Arab uprisings, and the political trajectory of the region remains difficult to grasp. In The Clash of Values, Mansoor Moaddel provides groundbreaking empirical data to demonstrate how the collision between Islamic fundamentalism and liberal nationalism explains the region’s present and will determine its future. Analyzing data from over 60,000 face-to-face interviews of nationally representative samples of people in seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey—Moaddel reveals the depth and breadth of the conflict of values. He develops measures of expressive individualism, gender equality, secularism, and religious fundamentalism and shows that the factors that strengthen liberal values also weaken fundamentalism. Moaddel highlights longitudinal data showing changes in orientations toward secular politics, Western-type government, religious tolerance, national identity, and to a limited extent gender equality, as well as a significant decline in support for political Islam, over the past decade. Focusing on these trends, he contends that the Arab Spring represents a new phase of collective action rooted in the spread of the belief in individual liberty. Offering a rigorous and deeply researched perspective on social change, The Clash of Values disentangles the Middle East and North Africa’s political complexity and pinpoints a crucial trend toward liberal nationalism.

What is the conflict between Islamic fundamentalism and the free world really about? Can terrorism be defeated? How is Israel’s war in the Middle East related to the global war against the terrorists? In A Clash of Values, Tal Ben-Shahar confronts some of the most difficult and critical questions we must face in a post-September 11th world. Drawing on historical facts and essential philosophical truths—from the cause of the refugee problem to the nature of rationality—Ben-Shahar’s principled and pragmatic approach makes sense of a situation that often seems senseless.

Expanding upon, and engaging with, the influential theories of Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilisations, this book is a major, and controversial, contribution to these key contemporary debates. Dieter Senghaas examines some of the most significant political issues we face today: * How do societies cope with pluralization? * Can tolerance be a successful solution? * What is the role of 'culture' in recent conflicts which have been described as culturally induced? * And will twenty-first-century world politics sink into cultural conflicts on a biblical scale? Dieter Senghaas explores these questions within the context of the main non-Western cultural areas Chinese political philosophy, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism and goes on to reflect on the possibility of a constructive form of intercultural dialogue. Senghaas's distinctive and radical approach will be of great interest and topicality to all those working in politics, international relations, sociology, cultural studies, development studies, religion and international political economy.

The "clash of civilizations" focuses on conflict and cooperation between and within states. Dealing with the clash is essential for a peaceful and harmonious world. The "clash of civilizations" is a topic of great interest around the world and constitutes an important dimension of religion and international relations. In the quarter century since Huntington first aired his controversial framework, inter-civilizational "clash" and "dialogue" have become mainstream issues both in international relations and in many Western countries' domestic concerns. The book examines a key question: how does Samuel Huntington’s "clash of civilizations" "paradigm" help explain current Western governments" responses to Muslim migration and related security issues? Understanding relations between the West/Westerners and Muslim-majority societies/Muslims is impossible without being aware that right-wing populist politicians in the West, as well as some policy makers and commentators, seem to view all Muslims in a malign way. This indicates a lack of willingness to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the mass of "moderate," "ordinary," and "peaceful" Muslims and, on the other hand, a small minority of Islamist extremists and even smaller number of Islamist terrorists. The result is a crucial topic of our times: how do different civilizations coexist in a small and increasingly congested planet without conflict? The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs.

The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in today’s geopolitical climate—with a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication in 1996, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations pose the greatest threat to world peace, but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia have changed global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify inter-civilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. In his incisive analysis, Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, multi-civilizational world.

Expanding upon, and engaging with, the influential theories of Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilisations, this book is a major, and controversial, contribution to these key contemporary debates. Dieter Senghaas examines some of the most significant political issues we face today: * How do societies cope with pluralization? * Can tolerance be a successful solution? * What is the role of 'culture' in recent conflicts which have been described as culturally induced? * And will twenty-first-century world politics sink into cultural conflicts on a biblical scale? Dieter Senghaas explores these questions within the context of the main non-Western cultural areas Chinese political philosophy, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism and goes on to reflect on the possibility of a constructive form of intercultural dialogue. Senghaas's distinctive and radical approach will be of great interest and topicality to all those working in politics, international relations, sociology, cultural studies, development studies, religion and international political economy.

This publication, from Edinburgh University Press, is conceived as the premier source of material on a comprehensive range of topics in contemporary liberalism. It surveys some of the most important topics relating to liberal theory including nationalism, citizenship, multiculturalism, feminism, Marxism, environmentalism, human rights, pluralism, and post-communism. There are also chapters on such key thinkers as Habermas, Weber, Foucault, and Rawls, and chapters that explore the critical challenges that liberalism now faces. Companion to Contemporary Liberalismwill allow students to explore liberalism's contemporary relevance and to look to its likely future developments: each essay-entry, by a notable scholar in the field, has been commissioned to provide analysis of a specific issue, topic or key thinker within contemporary liberal theory.

Why do citizens in pluralist democracies disagree collectively about the very values they agree on individually? This provocative book highlights the inescapable conflicts of rights and values at the heart of democratic politics. Based on interviews with thousands of citizens and political decision makers, the book focuses on modern Canadian politics, investigating why a country so fortunate in its history and circumstances is on the brink of dissolution. Taking advantage of new techniques of computer-assisted interviewing, the authors explore the politics of a wide array of issues, from freedom of expression to public funding of religious schools to government wiretapping to antihate legislation, analyzing not only why citizens take the positions they do but also how easily they can be talked out of them. In the process, the authors challenge a number of commonly held assumptions about democratic politics. They show, for example, that political elites do not constitute a special bulwark protecting civil liberties; that arguments over political rights are as deeply driven by commitment to the master values of democratic politics as by failure to understand them; and that consensus on the rights of groups is inherently more fragile than on the rights of individuals.