US hawks’ talk of a clash of civilisations is rooted in an intolerance of differences
- US State Department official Kiron Skinner’s comments on the US-China conflict being between two vastly different civilisations betray a sense of Judeo-Christian superiority and a lack of understanding of the reality of China
I may have worked much of my life as a journalist but, by vocation, I have always seen myself as an anthropologist.
As an 18-year-old working-class Christian kid, I was sent to Peshawar, Pakistan, as a teacher with Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas. My world was turned upside down. I discovered that Islam provided ordinary Pakistanis with a framework by which to understand the imponderables of life, setting rules very similar to Christianity’s Ten Commandments that enabled crowded communities to get along.
Clearly Christianity and Islam were different from each other. But they were both essentially helping us understand and interpret the world around us, behave considerately, manage differences, jealousies and rivalries, minimise conflicts, and lending authority to governments that would otherwise simply exert raw power.
Later, as a university student of social anthropology and development economics, I learned more comprehensively about how, despite massive differences between races, societies, cultures and languages, our civilisations share remarkable similarities in institutions that manage common problems.
