A Post Western World? A Disturbing Interview With Prof. Harry Redner - Part 2 | Zero Hedge

A Post Western World? A Disturbing Interview With Prof. Harry Redner - Part 2

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co., 

Prof. Harry Redner was Reader at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, as well as visiting professor at Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and Harvard University. He postulates that the world is now transitioning to “beyond civilization” – a new and unprecedented condition in Human History known as globalization. This in turn has major implications for societies across the world, and in particular developed nations.

He is the author of several articles and fourteen books, including a tetralogy on civilization: “Beyond Civilization: Society, Culture, and the Individual in the Age of Globalization”, “Totalitarianism, Globalization, Colonialism: The Destruction of Civilization since 1914”, “The Tragedy of European Civilization: Towards an Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century” and “The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals: Evil, Enlightenment, and Death”.

PART II: THE WEST AND THE REST

E. Tavares: 

In Part I we discussed the ongoing decline of Western Civilization. In this Part we will talk about other major civilizations, or better put their successors, and how they relate to that process. We say successors because as you point out they have all collapsed.

Muslim Civilization disappeared with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Russian Civilization was obliterated by communist totalitarianism and the resulting millions of casualties. Likewise, the Chinese communist revolution obliterated that nation’s millennial traditions and customs by design. And Indian Civilization did not resist successive Muslim invasions.

Since all four follow a similar pattern of collapse, turmoil, transition and picking up the pieces, let’s use it to analyze each one in turn, starting with the Islamic world.

Talking about its collapse may actually sound nonsensical here since it is the fastest growing religion on the planet (by demographics, not actual conversions), we have seen the emergence of very conservative versions across many Muslim countries, including the once strongly secular Turkey, it touches Western, Russian and Chinese borders (not always peacefully) and it is a topic of robust political discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. So how can the Islamic Civilization be dead?

H. Redner: 

What you assert is largely true - Islam is expanding both demographically in terms of numbers and geographically in respect of the exodus of Muslims to other areas of the world beyond their countries of origin; but, at the same time, it is also the case that an Islamic civilization is no longer functioning as an autonomous entity, and if not completely dead, it is dying, as is also the case with other civilizations. This is a paradox on which Samuel Huntington floundered with his theory of a “war of civilizations”, which has been mindlessly echoed ever since his book was published twenty years ago. There is no “war of civilizations”; that which he took to be such is a very different phenomenon, which has partly to do with the paradox to which you allude. The upsurge of Jihadist movements in Muslim countries and the terrorism this has generated all over the world is an internal revolution peculiar to the people of what was once an Islamic civilization.

Cont.....