Samuel P. Huntington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington

Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927 – December 24, 2008) was an influential conservative political scientist from the United States of America whose works covered multiple sub-fields of political science. He gained wider prominence through his Clash of Civilizations (1993, 1996) thesis of a post-Cold War new world order.

https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/ZIFConferenceReport_ExpertWorksh...

In his keynote speech on “Islamic Law and PostConflict Justice”, Prof. Cherif Bassiouni1

addressed Samuel P. Huntington’s proclaimed “clash of civilizations”. He argued that Huntington’s discourse was inaccurate in light of the many thousands of deaths in conflict-torn Muslim countries like Iraq, Bangladesh and Palestine. If at all, a clash of civilizations would take place within the Muslim Umma, the religious community comprising all Muslims. One explanation for the conflicts within the Muslim world might be the relativity of time in the different Muslim societies. According to Prof. Bassiouni, many Muslims still refer to the practices of the seventh century and are thus forced to reason by analogy, one of the Shari’a’s key principles. He also argued that there was no “inevitability of conflict” but what might render conflicts inevitable is the will of the leaders of the countries involved.