THE WESTERN AND THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES IN SAMUEL HUNTINGTON’S CONCEPTION

This paper discusses the main issues connected with the concept of civilization and comparative studies of civilizations. The analysis is based on Samuel Huntington’s conception of the clash of civilizations, which claims that contemporary confrontations between the Western and the Arab countries result from the nature of Islam as a different civilization, and, in particular, from the bellicose and hermetic character of this religion. Huntington follows the oriental understanding of Islam, in which Islam is presented in a stereotypical way, thus enhancing the negative images of the Muslims. This, in turn, underlines the mythical dimension of this paradigm. For both, the Orientalism and the Huntington’s paradigm, it is obvious to identify Islam with “original cultural aggressivity” whose subject has always been, first the Judeo-Christian, and currently the secular West