This article reflects Tariq Ali's efforts to understand the reality of the myth of 'the clash of civilizations' as a socio-materialist scientist to metabolize compellingly inter-connected dimensions of historical 'reality'. The deconstruction of the historic reality provides us with a new prism to view the world from different perspectives, looking at new directions in the politico-historic enterprise. West has had a long tradition of misinterpreting the Crusades as holy wars were meant for the glorification of Christian divine faith, and they have become a metaphor for blessing humanity with West's superior moral values against the 'horror' of Islam. Western academia has been promoting this deceptive view of two 'incommensurable' civilizations. Huntington stretches this view to develop his philosophy of the clash of civilizations'. Tariq Ali is a Marxist socialist who interprets the Spanish history and rewrites the history of the Muslims' relationship and the Christians from a materialist perspective to disprove Huntington's thesis that Islam and Christianity are inherently incompatible for peaceful coexistence because of their totalizing teleological claims. Ali's Islam Quintet, a sequence of five novels, exposes the imperialist agenda behind the clash theory. This article analyzes Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, the first novel of Ali's Islam Quintet, to evaluate Ali's critique of the clash of civilizations.
The Stone Woman is a complex story of the decline of the Ottomans and the rise of Christians in Europe. By abandoning the strong Turkish asabiyyah (social solidarity) and ignoring the prominent features of Islamic umran (civilisation), the Ottoman Empire fell, and the Christians gained power due to their advanced knowledge and strong social solidarity. As the fall of the Turks and the rise of the Christians occurred cyclically, the Cyclical Theory of the rise and fall of civilisations in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah seems appropriate for the theoretical outline. It also explores how the Khaldunian concepts of asabiyyah and umran are related to Ali’s alternative history of the Christian-Muslim relations. The research concludes that Turkey has remained the center of the East-West conflict. The Middle East’s contemporary socio-political issues and ethnic strife originated in the Ottoman era.Keywords: Ibn Khaldun, Cyclic Theory, Ottoman Empire, Asabiyyah, Rise and Fall of Civilisations
The formation of an individual's identity is marked by a singular integration of borders and cultures. The phenomenon of transculturalism has contributed to an increase in the breadth of debate over the nature of the connection between the two. This analysis aims to analyze the novel The Shadow Lines by Amitave Ghosh from the viewpoints of boundaries, transculturalism, and the building of identities. It will be claimed that boundaries in this context imply both possibilities and restrictions, a point that is fully reflected upon in the contrasting viewpoints of nationalism and transculturalism. Epstein’s transcultural vision of "crossroads of civilizations," will provide the framework to debate interlinks of border and possibilities of being transcultural in a rigidly nationalist context.
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