The Myth of 'The Clash of Civilizations'  

"there will never be peace, because you can't continue to sweep away the fact that Israel was constructed on the ruins of another society and by the mass dispossession of another people who remain unacknowledged as just sort of obscure natives in the background, back to the desert, let them go to one of the other Arab countries. That's been the position. The Oslo Accords say specifically that Israel bears no responsibility for the costs of the occupation." --"The Myth of 'The Clash of Civilizations'" (1998), Edward Said [1]

"Huntington's authorities are not the cultures themselves but a small handful authorities picked by him, because, in fact, they emphasize the latent bellicosity in one or another statement by one or another so-called spokesperson for or about that culture. The giveaway for me is the title of his book and his essay, The Clash of Civilizations. Which is not his phrase but Bernard Lewis's. On the last page of Lewis's essay titled, "The Roots of Muslim Rage", which appeared in the September 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Lewis speaks about the current problem with the Islamic world, I quote: (this is incredible stuff.) "It should by now be clear," Lewis says, "that we are facing a mood and movement in Islam far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations. The perhaps irrational, but surely historic receptions of an ancient rival against our” (whenever you hear the word our, you want to head for the exit) “Judeo Christian heritage, our secular present and the world-wide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival." [2]