REL 305
Islam and the West: A Clash of Civilizations? Spring 2026
Division II

The Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian Intifadas. The Islamic Revolution in Iran and the subsequent hostage crisis. September 11th and the “War on Terror.” The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Rushdie affair, Danish cartoon controversy, and Charlie Hebdo attack. The hijab ban in France and the Ground Zero Mosque controversy in the US. The rise of ISIS and Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” The repeated Israeli military conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah. Such high-profile cases all seem to validate the narrative of an inevitable clash between the West and Islam; that the Muslim world is simply an unyielding enemy of and threat to the Western world. This was most (in)famously described by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington as a “Clash of Civilizations.” How should we understand this history and narrative? Is this an antagonism coded in the DNA of these civilizations, going back at least to the Crusades? Is there something inherent in Islamic religious teachings–from the time of Muhammad onward–that is in conflict with the liberal and secular values of the modern world? This course interrogates such assumptions through a decolonial framework. We critically examine the history that gives rise to both the geopolitical crises mentioned above as well as the Clash of Civilizations narrative itself. What is the role of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the Cold War in this story? How can we understand Muslim antagonism and resistance to the West? What are “the West” and the “Islamic world” anyways? What are “Orientalism” and “Islamophobia”? What is the “War on Terror”? How should we think about religious violence, as well as the concept and phenomenon of “terrorism”? How should we understand political mobilization under the banner of Islam? Is there some irreconcilable clash between Islamic norms and liberal-secular values (particularly freedom and equality, in matters of gender and sexuality as well as politics and statecraft)? We examine these questions through works of postcolonial and decolonial theory, historical and ethnographic studies, as well as primary sources from Western pundits and Muslim thinkers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Through this material, we reflect on wider theoretical questions about the nature of modernity, knowledge and power, colonialism, the state, and ethics.