Is there a clash of civilizations? By Robert Kagan and Amartya Sen

From: Robert Kagan
To: Amartya Sen
Subject: Why Is There So Little Evidence To Contradict the "Clash" Theory?
Wednesday, May 3, 2006, at 6:48 AM ET

Dear Dr. Sen,

Let me begin our little correspondence by congratulating you on your wonderful book. It is (with apologies for the following string of back-cover-blurblike phrases) elegantly written, powerful, convincing, humane, and necessary. No doubt our hosts at Slate will be unhappy to hear this, but I agree with you about almost everything. I agree entirely when you insist that to interpret the present era as a "clash of civilizations" is both mistaken and dangerous and that it is important to view people not by a single identity—as Muslim, "Western," or Asian—but as a bundle of identities. Your keenest insight may be that we need to avoid falling into precisely the trap that Osama Bin Laden has deliberately laid for us: to divide the world into Muslim and non-Muslim. Above all, I share your conviction that liberal democracy is not a cultural phenomenon but a basic human aspiration. I may perhaps go even further than you in arguing that liberal democracy—which does not separate peoples by cultures but unites them in common devotion to the principle of equal rights—is the only durable answer to the present crisis...