The Clash of Civilization thesis by Samuel Huntington and the claims of other scholars such as Bernard Lewis reinforced the impression in the West that the Arab world is a homogeneous and rigid entity ready to clash with other civilizations. In fact, some in the West argue that world civilizations have religious characteristics, for that reason the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will be primarily cultural and religious. However, other scholars argue that there is no single Islamic culture but rather multiple types of political Islam and different perception of it. Therefore, the monolithic aspect of Islam is no longer a credible argument. Furthermore, they assert that there are many examples of harmonious relations between countries that came from different civilization than those of the same civilization. The Purpose of my thesis is to investigate whether there is actually a diversity and plurality of thoughts within the contemporary Arab discourse. Research was conducted through a qualitative that was made possible during a careful exploration of the biography and the scholarly work of many scholars with diverse cultural tone and beliefs; mainly through Arabic primary sources that were translated by the author. The principal finding was that all tendencies were and are present within the political culture of the Islamic and Arab world, from the extreme left to the extreme right. Yet, the political scene looks chaotic, tense and leaving many important questions unanswered.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-5114 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Creators | Louai, Chadia |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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