The Present Clash of Religious Communities and Regional Civilisations in the Global Civilising Process

Abstract

Immediately after the end of the conflict between east and west, Francis Fukuyama advocated the thesis that following the downfall of the fascist, National Socialist and communist systems of rule, the liberal democratic system of rule was the only one that could successfully claim universal validity. In 1993, Samuel Huntington presented the counter-thesis that western liberal democracy can only have a regional reach, and that it would have to dissociate itself from seven other, predominantly religious-philosophically defined civilisations and to assert itself culturally, politically and militarily in a dispute spanning several decades. Huntington’s depiction of international relations as a clash of civilisations was met with considerable support worldwide, as well as attracting vehement opposition by adherents of a certain type of cultural globalisation, in particular of universal values such as human rights, democracy, the rule of law, social justice and ecological balance. Huntington regarded inner-state multiculturalism as being a risk to the west in particular, although at the same time, he supported interstate and wider regional multiculturalism.

Most severe and violent conflicts since the collapse of communist party dominance have occurred within the major civilisations and religious communities, whereby state, national and ethnic interests play a far greater role than those of religious communities. While for a long time, the primary responsibility for wars and the destruction of human life was assigned to the religions, since the atrocities committed under National Socialist and communist rule at the latest, atheism has forfeited its claims to moral superiority. Since the mid-1970s, when communism lost its intellectual attractiveness for the human striving for freedom without the alternative principles of socialism or liberalism and democracy being able to accept its inheritance, a certain renaissance of social and political significance of the religions can be observed. Since then, religious-culturally based conflicts have played a significantly greater role than in previous decades, although an incomparably lesser one than during the centuries of religious and confessional wars. These wars reflect the ambivalence of the religions. On the one hand, they can legitimise war, violence and atrocities, while on the other, they retain in their holy writings and traditions the potential for shared, ecumenical justifications for humanity and the promotion of peace. Not liberal-democratic missionary wars, but the non-simultaneous, sometimes slow learning processes of the peoples offer a chance for a global-human culture or civilisation, and provide impetus for further international organisation.

Lecture given on 15.7.2013.