The War of Monotheism: On the Inability of Civilization to Expand: The West Battles against Itself

All political, economic, moral, and diplomatic commentaries on the war in Iraq have been given and are known. Therefore, I would like to concentrate on the concept that establishes the horizon of this war—a war that is occurring in all possible forms, whether or not military deployments are openly going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, or elsewhere. This concept is that of a "war of civilizations."

Even though this thesis has been discussed and painstakingly investigated in books and articles, it continues to correspond more or less to the image of an idea determined by public opinion. This thesis is at once true and false. It is correct insofar as there is a permanent war, in the widest sense of the word, between two key concepts that relate to the hegemony of the Western world. This permanent war succeeds the so-called Cold War. It reveals how the one and only Western world finds itself in a continuous state of inner war that, since the all-out conflict of 1914, is no longer the old war of sovereign states.

Almost a century ago, the epoch passed in which the world was subjected to the myriad relationships of "Powers" that long since ordered it. Out of this world, there developed a generalizable inner chaos, which proceeded to dissolve the balances of power while at the same time tending to annihilate their differences as Western within the processes of their own globalization.

This condition prohibits one from speaking of a "war of civilizations," as if Western civilization confronts some other Arabic-Oriental one. This process has already begun within the inner realm of Western civilization. After having created a situation within itself that destabilizes the different parts of old Europe, civilization tears itself apart. On one hand, it produces the American superpower, and on the other hand, the serious identity crisis of Europe. Here, civilization undeniably brings to light the contradiction between its claim for a rational-moral universality (i.e., in science and democracy) and the glaring injustice of the situations created through its own hegemony.

Of course, the ruling classes or castes of formerly colonized countries have taken every measure to ensure that colonial revenues are secured to their advantage. At the same time, and because of technological and economic changes, they have also added new revenues (especially from oil). Consequently, this increases the occurrences of injustice and of economic and cultural difference, which give rise to oligarchies, clans, and Mafia-like powers. These potentates injure their own people by upholding a belief in a supposed (self-)autonomy, which in fact only hides their autocracy.

Even this very phenomenon reveals the inability of Western civilization to do otherwise, i.e., to dialectically mediate between its hegemony, on the one hand, and its ideals or norms, on the other—all of which culminates in an increasing inability to expand. In truth, then, such a civilization reveals its inability to expand as civilization. It expands (only) its own implosion. Likewise, one could say, in a far-fetched analogy, that the chaos and inner unrest of the Roman Empire in the pax romana had spread the seeds of disintegration and conflict. Nothing is more symptomatic of this state of affairs than the concept of religion. From one side, a caricature of Islam suddenly arises in which the most trivial features of the most narrow and naïve aspects of this tradition (which developed throughout the entire history of the Mediterranean area) are ossified in a tetanus-like rigidity. From the other side, the confidence in a no less naïve morality wants to answer this state of affairs by giving support to the motto "in God we trust"—which is necessary for freedom to rule. Here, "sameness" confronts the "same." Without doubt, it is not in the least surprising that one finds the oldest of the three Gods of monotheism involved in the debate that, in connection with Israel, materializes all the self-destructive events of this situation. Monotheism represents the unity and...