The East Between “Clash of Civilizations, Orientalism, and Post-Islamism”: How the Major Questions Are Shifting in an Unstable World

Introduction

In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the world is undergoing a profound transitional moment that extends well beyond familiar geopolitical shifts. Alongside the rise of Asian powers, the erosion of Western centrality, and the intensification of transnational crises, there has emerged a broad wave of identity redefinition, the politicization of cultural belonging, and a renewed prominence of civilizational narratives in intellectual and political debates. The international landscape is no longer governed solely by struggles over power or resources, but increasingly by a more complex contest over the epistemic models through which the world is interpreted, legitimacy is constructed, and the meanings of humanity, identity, and progress are defined.

Within this context, the question of East and West reasserts itself as an epistemological–civilizational problem that transcends the conventional binary of colonizer and colonized, and moves beyond the reductive framework offered by the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis as an explanatory model that ultimately reproduces Western epistemic dominance.[1] Contemporary transformations do not reflect a civilizational confrontation in a narrow cultural sense so much as they signal a redistribution of epistemic power and a reconfiguration of the civilizational imagination that determines the respective positions of East and West within the global order.

This brings to the fore a central question that this paper seeks to address theoretically: how can the East reorganize its intellectual and political frameworks in a world where the struggle among powers is no longer the most adequate lens of interpretation, having been supplanted by a contest among models, visions, and civilizational imaginaries?

The conflict in the contemporary international system is no longer merely a struggle over power or resources; it has become a struggle over the production of meaning: who defines the human being, who determines the legitimacy of the state, and who shapes the concept of progress.

The paper begins with a critical examination of the epistemological foundations of the “Clash of Civilizations” model, situating it within a Western context that reaffirms its own centrality, and proceeds to deconstruct prevailing representations of the East as merely a civilizational or geopolitical “other.” It also explores the internal transformation within the Islamic world from political Islam to post-Islamism, viewing this shift as evidence of the emergence of a new Eastern question-one that seeks not to reproduce ideology, but to construct a renewed understanding of identity, the state, development, and human dignity.

The paper argues that the core conflict of our time is no longer religious or cultural in the traditional sense, but rather an epistemological–anthropological struggle over the definition of humanity, legitimacy, citizenship, progress, and the future. In this regard, the legacy of Orientalism, as critically analyzed by Edward Said, remains deeply embedded in the structure of this conflict.[2] Orientalist approaches produced reductive representations of the East, stripped it of epistemic agency, and positioned it as an object of understanding and interpretation rather than a partner in the production of knowledge. Consequently, the contemporary redefinition of Eastern subjectivity becomes an integral part of dismantling this Saidian legacy, which entrenched an unequal relationship in determining the meanings of modernity and rationality. It is within this framework that debates surrounding post-Islamism acquire particular significance, as they reveal an Eastern attempt to reconstitute itself outside the confines imposed jointly by Western and Orientalist narratives, without abandoning cultural roots or historical specificity.

This paper advances the assumption that the East today possesses a genuine opportunity to reposition itself as a source of new civilizational meaning grounded in identity, agency, development, and ethics-beyond the binary of dependency or confrontation with the West. The central question is no longer how the East should confront the West, but rather how the East can contribute to reshaping the world’s grand questions at a moment when the global order itself is being reconstituted.

Methodologically, the paper adopts an analytical–conceptual approach structured around three interrelated levels:

1. A structural analysis of transformations in the international system and the rise of non-Western powers;
2. An epistemological–discursive analysis of representations of the East in Western thought, coupled with a critique of the “Clash of Civilizations” model;
3. A cultural–anthropological analysis of the redefinition of core concepts such as humanity, the state, and progress within both Eastern and Western contexts.

Rather than offering empirical data, the paper seeks to construct a theoretical framework for understanding the nature of civilizational conflict in the twenty-first century.

First: The East in the Mirror of the “Clash of Civilizations” and Orientalism

Since Samuel Huntington put forward his well-known thesis in the mid-1990s, the East has been represented-within the Western imagination-as a zone of “civilizational tension,” where religious identities, geopolitical conflicts, and shifting power relations intersect. A deeper critical review, however, reveals that this classification was less the product of objective analysis than a reflection of a Western epistemic structure that reproduces itself through the construction of an imagined “East.” Three core issues help illuminate the limits of this perspective.

1. The East as an Object of Western Narrative Rather Than an Epistemic Agent

Western approaches tend to treat the East as a “terrain” upon which analyses are projected, rather than as an active subject capable of producing knowledge or redefining its position in the world. This tendency is evident in the reduction of the East to a set of stereotypical signifiers: Islam, terrorism, oil, border conflicts, or sectarian divisions. These are not merely analytical categories, but the products of an epistemic system that derives its authority from Western centrality and its capacity to construct the “other” in accordance with its own needs and self-perception.

2. The Political Instrumentalization of the Civilizational Conflict Paradigm

The “Clash of Civilizations” thesis quickly moved beyond the realm of academic debate to become an effective political instrument in the formulation of Western policies. It was employed to justify military interventions, reshape migration policies, and regulate Muslim presence within Western societies, while also serving to repair Western identity itself in the post–Cold War era. Within this narrative, the East becomes a “functional other,” enabling the West to restore internal cohesion by defining itself in opposition to an imagined civilizational entity perceived as threatening its political and value systems.

3. The Crisis of Civilizational Alternatives in the East

Despite the historical and cultural weight of the Arab and Islamic worlds, the East has failed over the past century to articulate an alternative civilizational narrative capable of matching or competing epistemically with the Western one. Nationalist, leftist, and Islamist projects have succeeded one another without producing a coherent epistemic model for governing the state, society, and modernity. It is within this context that the significance of post-Islamism emerges, as an attempt to reformulate questions of identity and statehood outside traditional ideological frameworks.

The limitations of this perspective become even more apparent when viewed through Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, which demonstrated how Western academia, politics, and media produced imagined representations of the East grounded in binaries such as superiority/inferiority, knowledge/ignorance, and modernity/backwardness. In Orientalist discourse, the East is not a historical or social reality but a discursive construction-a representation whose meaning derives from the West’s need to define itself through a fixed and ideologized “other”. From this vantage point, the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis can be read as a modernized extension of classical Orientalism, reproducing the East as a space of civilizational threat rather than as an active subject endowed with epistemic agency or the capacity to formulate an autonomous civilizational project.

The “Clash of Civilizations” thesis was less a description of an existing reality than a reproduction of a Western epistemic structure that, after the end of the Cold War, required a new “civilizational Other” in order to stabilize itself and redefine its identity.

Said’s critique further explains how civilizational classifications were transformed into political tools for ordering the world according to Western centrality-rendering the East an object of surveillance, regulation, and interpretation, rather than a partner in the production of knowledge or in redefining concepts of statehood, identity, and modernity. Understanding contemporary transformations-including post-Islamism-thus becomes part of a broader effort to liberate the East from its Orientalist representations and to reclaim its position as a historical and epistemic actor capable of producing its own narrative.

Second: Critiquing the “Clash of Civilizations” Framework – From a Western Narrative to an Epistemological Analysis

When Samuel Huntington introduced his thesis in 1993, his objective was to interpret the post–Cold War world through a framework centered on civilizational conflict. While the thesis gained widespread prominence, its visibility did not obscure the deep conceptual flaws that undermine its capacity to explain contemporary international realities.

The model was constructed upon a reductive binary that collapses the East into Islam and juxtaposes it against a liberal West, as if both constituted homogeneous civilizational blocs devoid of internal plurality or contradiction. Through this excessive abstraction, the vast historical, political, and social complexity that characterizes the East is erased, and the diversity of experiences-often resistant to aggregation within a single framework-is effectively negated.

A further critical issue lies in the production of the “other” as a condition for Western self-definition. Huntington was not merely describing an existing reality; he was actively reconstituting an epistemic structure in which the West, following the end of the Cold War, required a new “civilizational adversary.” In this sense, the East becomes an epistemic necessity for the West rather than an autonomous object of analysis.[3]

Moreover, the “civilizational conflict” thesis overlooks a series of structural transformations that are radically reshaping the global order-an omission that exposes its limited explanatory power. The contemporary international system is increasingly shaped by an unprecedented digital revolution that has transformed the meanings of knowledge, power, and communication, while reconfiguring economic and public life in ways that transcend traditional cultural explanations. Within this context, the nation-state no longer constitutes the sole organizing framework of international relations, as transnational technological, financial, and social networks have emerged with an influence that often surpasses that of classical political institutions.

In parallel, the relationship between the individual and technology has undergone a profound transformation. Individuals are now embedded within intelligent systems that reshape their self-perception and their understanding of the surrounding world, raising existential questions concerning freedom, privacy, and identity. Taken together, these developments demonstrate that the world is moving along trajectories in which cultural or religious factors alone are insufficient to account for major global interactions. This renders the “Clash of Civilizations” model incapable of grasping the structural complexity that defines the twenty-first century.

Orientalism stripped the East of its status as a cognitive agent, presenting it instead as an object to be understood, interpreted, and managed—rather than as a partner in the production of knowledge or in the formulation of modernity and rationality.

These dynamics collectively expose the model’s inability to explain the contemporary world. While the critique of the “Clash of Civilizations” framework reveals its external limitations, a deeper understanding of current transformations also requires attention to the internal crisis unfolding within the West itself.

Third: The Structural Transformation of the West – From Universal Centrality to Defensive Identity

1. The Crisis of the Liberal Project

The West today is experiencing a profound internal disorientation that extends across political, economic, and cultural levels. Politically, the rise of populism and the erosion of traditional democratic institutions mark an unprecedented inward retreat. Events such as Brexit, the ascent of Donald Trump, and successive waves of nationalist right-wing movements across Europe are not merely electoral phenomena, but indicators of a declining Western capacity to offer a persuasive or universal political model, as had long been claimed. The liberal order that constituted the backbone of the international system after World War II now faces challenges that strike at the core of its mechanisms and institutions.

Economically, Western societies are witnessing a rapid widening of class disparities and a clear decline in the middle class, which once functioned as a pillar of social stability. Culturally, an individualistic identity crisis has emerged, eroding shared social bonds and generating fragmented conceptions of the self and of freedom. In such a context, liberalism appears increasingly unable to produce a unifying moral narrative or a convincing civilizational model. The liberal project thus confronts a deep structural crisis that transcends politics and economics, reaching into the very value foundations of Western societies-as if it were losing both its ethical justification and its capacity to generate a shared meaning for public life.

2. The West’s Shift from a “Universal Project” to a “Threatened Identity”

In the face of this internal erosion, liberalism no longer presents itself as a universal project directed at the world, but is increasingly articulated as a hybrid identity seeking self-preservation. The West, which once viewed its values as a global model, now looks outward with suspicion and inward with a growing sense of fragility. This transformation is clearly reflected in the tightening of migration policies, the rise of hostile discourses toward Muslims, mounting anxiety over the rise of China as a challenge to the Western model, as well as an increasing inclination toward strategic isolationism and reduced global engagement.

Taken together, these indicators reveal that the West no longer treats liberalism as a project for export, but rather as a boundary to be defended. Here, the function of grand concepts is transformed: instead of serving as a theoretical framework for the world, liberalism has become a defensive shelter against transformations that increasingly exceed its explanatory and normative reach.

In light of this shift, the notion of “civilizational conflict” is no longer employed as an analytical tool for understanding the world, but rather as a reaction rooted in a loss of control. It provides the West with a simplification narrative that reproduces the image of a “threatening other” and explains profound internal transformations as the outcome of an external civilizational clash, rather than as symptoms of a structural internal crisis. Civilizational conflict thus becomes a defensive narrative rather than an epistemic framework capable of interpreting the world-a narrative aimed more at protecting an embattled identity than at understanding emerging global dynamics.

The decades following the end of the Cold War witnessed an exceptional moment of Western confidence in the liberal model, to the extent that some thinkers proclaimed the “end of history” and the West’s capacity to shape the entire trajectory of humanity. Yet the past decade in particular has delivered four structural blows to this illusion, contributing to the dismantling of the foundations of Western centrality that had dominated human thought for five centuries:

1. The rise of China as a distinct model combining statehood and civilization, successfully redefining global economic and political rules;
2. Deep internal crises within Western democracies, manifested in populism, Brexit, and the rise of nationalist right-wing movements, exposing the fragility of the democratic model long presented as a universal standard;
3. The failure of economic liberalism to generate internal justice, as class disparities widened and the middle class eroded;
4. The digital revolution, which undermined Western monopolies over knowledge, information, and communicative space.

Collectively, these transformations have not only weakened Western power, but have also shaken its intellectual legitimacy, returning the world to a moment characterized by the plurality of models rather than Western singularity.

Within this context of retreat, the West has shifted from a global force seeking to export its model to the world, to an anxious identity-centered power focused on safeguarding itself and its borders. Fears surrounding the decline of the middle class, migration flows, Islam as a cultural “other,” technological disruption, and China’s ascent have become central anxieties shaping Western political discourse. The West has thus moved from a global narrative claiming the ability to lead humanity, to a defensive discourse aimed at preserving its identity and authority.

Post-Islamism does not represent a departure from religion, but a departure from religion as a closed political ideology, and a search for a new meaning that integrates identity with modernity without dissolving into it.

The significance of this transformation lies in its direct impact on the nature of the East–West conflict: this conflict is no longer one over territory or resources, but one over narrative-over the capacity to produce meaning for the world and for the future.

Yet the transformation of the West alone does not fully explain the contours of this emerging conflict. A parallel transformation is unfolding within the East, particularly in the Islamic world-a shift reflected in the phase of post-Islamism.

Fourth: From Liberal Universalism to Civilizational Regionalism – Systemic Transformation Rather Than Disintegration

The transformations currently unfolding within the international system do not point to its collapse so much as they reveal its reconfiguration on new foundations that transcend the traditional binary of chaos versus hegemony. The world is not experiencing a “post-order” moment, but rather a post–liberal universalist moment-that is, the end of the claim that a single global model can regulate international relations, define progress, and articulate a universal conception of humanity, the state, and legitimacy. In this context, regionalism emerges as an alternative structural framework through which the world is being reorganized in a less centralized and more pluralistic manner.

Since the end of the Cold War, liberal universalism rested on a core assumption: that globalization would erode local identities, that the nation-state would recede in the face of the global market, and that individuals would evolve into cosmopolitan beings liberated from cultural and historical attachments. The past two decades, however, have exposed the fragility of these assumptions. Globalization has not unified the world so much as it has deepened inequalities between societies; it has not weakened the state but rather re-politicized it; and it has not produced a cosmopolitan individual, but instead triggered acute identity crises at the very heart of Western societies themselves.

As this erosion has unfolded, the international system has ceased to be governed from a single center or through a singular narrative. Instead, it now operates through major regions that possess sufficient civilizational distinctiveness, economic capacity, and security capabilities to manage their affairs in a quasi-autonomous manner. Regionalism here does not imply a return to isolation or disengagement from the world; rather, it signifies the re-embedding of globalization within specific cultural and geographic frameworks, whereby global interactions are mediated through differentiated regional units rather than through a dominant universal center.

This new form of regionalism differs fundamentally from traditional nationalism or older ideological alliances. It is not grounded in closed ethnic or religious bonds, nor in a comprehensive ideological project, but rather in the intersection of four principal elements: shared security concerns, convergent historical memory, intertwined economic interests, and a broadly aligned cultural vision regarding stability, humanity, and development. In this sense, regionalism becomes a functional framework for managing diversity rather than an instrument for its negation.

These transformations are particularly evident in the rise of regions approaching strategic self-sufficiency. East Asia, under the leadership of China, has reorganized supply chains, technology, and finance within a coherent regional space that does not eliminate interaction with the West but significantly reduces dependency upon it. Europe, confronted with security, energy, and migration crises, has begun to shift from a liberal universalist project toward a defensive–security-oriented bloc aimed at safeguarding its way of life and its borders. Even the United States itself, long the pillar of the universal order, has increasingly acted according to an expanded regional logic-prioritizing the protection of the Atlantic–Pacific sphere rather than the management of the world as a whole.

Within this framework, the rise of regionalism cannot be separated from the return of civilizational identities to the forefront of international politics. Identity here is not revived as a romantic cultural discourse, but as an organizing instrument that confers legitimacy, generates meaning, and rebuilds trust between the state and society. Experience has demonstrated that human beings cannot long inhabit an abstract universal model detached from history, culture, and collective bonds, and that attempts to impose such a model have, paradoxically, fueled the rise of defensive identities, populism, and inward-looking politics.

Regionalism thus acquires a profound anthropological dimension. It reflects the contemporary human search for an intermediate level of belonging-neither as narrow as family or sect, nor as abstract as the cosmopolitan individual. In this sense, the region becomes a space that offers individuals a sense of security and meaning, while enabling the state to derive its legitimacy from a broader cultural–social consensus rather than from externally imposed models.

For the Middle East, this transformation carries heightened significance. Long treated as an open arena for global interventions and great-power rivalries, the region now finds itself before a historic opportunity to redefine its position within an emerging regional order. Rather than remaining a “subordinate actor” within a declining universal system, the Middle East can evolve into an active region that reorders its priorities around stability, development, sovereignty, and the management of diversity-away from the sharp ideological polarizations that shaped much of the twentieth century.

In this context, the ongoing transformations within the region-from the redefinition of the state’s role, to the retreat of comprehensive ideologies, to the rise of discourses centered on competence and development-can only be understood as part of this broader transition toward regionalism. The state in the Middle East is no longer assessed by the extent of its integration into the global liberal model, nor by its adherence to a particular ideological narrative, but rather by its capacity to manage security, deliver services, preserve social cohesion, and engage pragmatically with its regional environment.

Here, regionalism intersects with the post-Islamist phase unfolding across the Arab and Islamic worlds. Both phenomena express a shift away from universal projects-whether liberal or Islamist-toward a logic of the realistic state rooted in cultural specificity. The central question is no longer which ideology should govern the state, but how the state can be effectively managed within a volatile region, and how an inclusive identity can be constructed that accommodates diversity without sliding into fragmentation or authoritarianism.

Today, the East does not need to confront the West, but rather to move from a position of reaction to one of action, from consuming knowledge to producing it, and from defending the self to setting the agenda.

Accordingly, regionalism does not represent a retreat from universality so much as its rationalization. It is an attempt to reorganize the world in a manner that allows for a plurality of models, diverse pathways of progress, and differing definitions of humanity and the state-without descending into comprehensive disorder. In a world that has lost confidence in grand universal narratives, regionalism may appear theoretically less ambitious, yet it is arguably more sustainable in historical terms.

In this sense, the shift toward regionalism becomes one of the key lenses for understanding the intellectual and political struggle of the twenty-first century. It is not a clash between opposing civilizations, but a contest between modes of organizing the world: a universal model that has lost its legitimacy and its capacity to generate meaning, and regional models that seek to fill this vacuum by reconnecting politics with culture, the state with society, and human beings with their roots. It is precisely within this vacuum that the contours of the new global order are being shaped.

Fifth: The East in the Post-Islamist Phase

Arab and Islamic societies are today entering a phase that may be described as “post-Islamism”-a transitional moment that does not eliminate the presence of religion in the public sphere, but rather reconfigures it within more complex relationships with the state, society, and modernity. In this phase, the East appears to stand before three interrelated intellectual and political trajectories that are reshaping its self-understanding and its position in the world.

The first of these trajectories concerns the redefinition of the state. The East no longer approaches the state through a normative lens that measures legitimacy by degrees of “Islamicity” or proximity to a particular ideological discourse. Instead, the emphasis has shifted toward performance and efficiency. In this emerging perspective, a successful state is one capable of delivering services, managing the economy effectively, ensuring stability, responding to global transformations, and building a healthy and balanced relationship with society. This shift aligns with a broader global trend marked by the decline of ideological centrality and the rise of the “capable state” model, in which effectiveness and governance take precedence over ideological legitimacy.

The second trajectory lies in the emergence of new identity discourses within the East. Identity is no longer confined to traditional religious belonging or to inherited nationalist symbols; it has become more fluid and dynamic. At times, the East is presented as a multilayered cultural space; at others, as a philosophy of living, a rising economy intertwined with Asian powers, or even as a rebellious youth identity embedded in the digital world and actively redefining its relationship with authority, meaning, and society. This “new East” bears little resemblance to the East of the twentieth century. It is being shaped within digital networks, hybrid cultural spaces, and patterns of consumption and social symbolism that differ fundamentally from earlier models.

The third trajectory involves a renewed engagement with the major civilizational questions. The central issue today is no longer whether a “clash of civilizations” exists, but rather the nature of this contest, who sets its terms, and how the East can move from being an object within others’ narratives to becoming a producer of its own civilizational narrative. This shift reflects a growing awareness that the East will not reclaim its civilizational role merely by defending identity or invoking the past, but by articulating a new epistemic project that transcends the binaries that long constrained it-East versus West, religious state versus secular state, traditional identity versus modern identity. What is required is a broader vision that integrates civilization with justice, development with knowledge, and human rights with spiritual and cultural bonds, in an effort to construct a civilizational project capable of addressing the contemporary human being in their own language, anxieties, and aspirations.

Sixth: Post-Islamism – Shifting the Conflict from Religion to Meaning

At the same time, the East has been undergoing a profound internal transformation manifested in what has come to be known as the post-Islamist phase-a moment that reveals a fundamental shift in the questions being raised by a new generation. After three decades of experimentation with political Islam, it has become increasingly evident that this project failed to construct a comprehensive model of the state, the economy, or knowledge, and did not succeed in producing an ethical framework capable of competing with or transcending the Western model. Over time, the discourse of political Islam was reduced to a form of moral protest, stripped of a viable vision for statehood and institutional governance. This failure cannot be confined to the political realm alone; it extends to the civilizational structure of the project itself. The new generation no longer asks, “How do we overthrow the state?” but rather, “How do we build a livable life within the state?”

From this perspective, post-Islamism does not represent a departure from religion, but a departure from religion as a closed political ideology. It is an attempt to search for meaning that moves beyond the traditional religious model without dissolving into Western modernity. Today’s youth seek neither a religious state nor a reduced imitation of the West; instead, they aspire to a third model: a modern state with clear cultural roots, one that does not rest on authoritarianism and does not embrace a project of cultural alienation that uproots identity. This is an effort to reposition local culture within a modern framework that does not conflict with science, rights, or development.

With this transformation, the center of intellectual struggle shifts in both the East and the West. The conflict is no longer between Islam and secularism, nor between East and West as closed and opposing entities. Rather, it has become a struggle over the capacity to produce a discourse that grants human life meaning in a deeply unstable world. It is precisely here that the East can redefine its role-not by restoring the past or imitating the West, but by constructing a new epistemic narrative capable of generating meaning and opening horizons for justice, development, dignity, and spiritual depth.

These intellectual transformations in the East also open the way to a deeper question concerning the very essence of the global struggle: who possesses the authority to define the foundational concepts of contemporary civilization?

Seventh: The Core of Today’s Intellectual Conflict – Who Defines the “Human,” the “State,” and “Progress”?

At this juncture, it becomes clear that the conflict between East and West is no longer ideological in the traditional sense, nor religious in the superficial manner promoted by “civilizational clash” narratives. At its core, the issue today revolves around who possesses the authority to define the foundational concepts upon which contemporary civilization rests: the definition of the human being, the definition of the state, and the definition of progress. Those who control these concepts, in effect, shape the trajectory of the future and determine the standards by which the success of nations is measured.

1. The Struggle over Defining the Human Being

The West is increasingly moving toward a radical conception of the human being centered on the autonomous individual as a self-contained unit, detached from the collective and entitled to continuously reconstruct the self according to personal choice-even at the expense of ethical and social bonds. This vision represents the apex of Western modernity, in which the individual has been emancipated from all traditional forms of authority: family, religion, community, and even stable components of identity.

By contrast, the East-in its Arab, Islamic, and Asian dimensions-advances a different understanding of the human being. Here, the individual is formed within the collective, embedded in memory, history, and values, and endowed with an identity that transcends fleeting desires and impulses. The human being, in this view, is not a purely individualistic project, but the product of a complex web of relationships that confer meaning, dignity, and belonging.

The conflict thus becomes anthropological at its core: what does it mean to be human? What are the limits of freedom? And what ethical framework makes human life viable? These questions extend beyond religion and politics, striking at the heart of the civilizational project itself.

2. The Struggle over Defining the State

The West tends to view the state as a neutral legal framework that separates the public and private spheres, deriving its legitimacy from the rule of law regardless of cultural identity. The East, by contrast, conceives of the state as a cultural–social body that embodies the nation’s history and values, making its legitimacy inseparable from its identity.

This fundamental divergence helps explain why liberal models of the state often fail when transplanted into Eastern contexts without regard for cultural specificity; why waves of political and social resistance emerge against Western versions of the modern state; and why societies in the region seek a state that is strong yet not repressive, modern yet not culturally alienated, and governed by law without being detached from its social foundations.

3. The Struggle over Defining Progress

In the Western paradigm, progress is closely associated with individual freedom, open markets, liberal values, and even “post-human” rights in the context of biotechnological transformations and artificial intelligence. The East, however, articulates an alternative vision in which progress is linked to development, justice, stability, cultural identity, and collective dignity.

Thus, it becomes evident that the true conflict does not revolve around religion, but around which model of progress should shape the twenty-first century: a model centered on the market and unrestricted freedom, or one grounded in justice, identity, and development.

Eighth: The True Intellectual Conflict Between East and West

What the East and the West are confronting today is not a clash of doctrines, but a struggle over meanings and models. The West advances an image of the human being as a rootless, autonomous individual, while the East conceives of the human as embedded within a web of values and relationships. The West promotes freedom without constraints, whereas the East links freedom to ethics and social responsibility. The West defines the state as a neutral legal apparatus, while the East views it as an extension of identity and culture. As for progress, the West tends to reduce it to individualism, liberalism, the market, and advanced rights, whereas the East redefines it through justice, development, efficiency, belonging, and social cohesion.

It thus becomes clear that today’s conflict is not over territory, but over meaning; not over power, but over the definition of the human; not over resources, but over the model that will shape the future. It is precisely within this space that the East possesses a historic opportunity to reposition itself-if it succeeds in producing its own narrative, one that grants meaning to human life, legitimacy to the state, and a sense of purpose to progress that transcends the narrowness of individualism and the repetition of the past.

For the first time in an entire century, the East stands before a genuine opportunity to redefine itself and its place in the world-an opportunity made possible by three major transformations that are reshaping the structure of the international system.

The first transformation is the rise of global pluralism. Western civilization is no longer the sole model or absolute reference point. New powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Southeast Asian states have emerged alongside rising African experiences and decentralized knowledge networks. Together, these shifts have redrawn global balances of power and meaning.

The second transformation concerns the decentralization of knowledge. Knowledge is no longer produced exclusively in Western capitals; universities, think tanks, and digital platforms have become open spaces that diminish Western centrality and enable the East to participate actively in the production of meaning.

The third transformation is the emergence of a post-ideological generation in the Arab world-a generation that is neither Islamist, nationalist, nor leftist, but pragmatic, digital, and oriented toward opportunity, competence, meaning, security, and a stable future. This generational shift has altered perceptions of religion, politics, and civilization, opening the door to a radical reimagining of the East’s future.

The state in the East is no longer measured by the degree of its “Islamicity” or ideological orientation, but by its capacity for performance, efficiency, security management, and the construction of a balanced relationship with society.

Against this backdrop, the questions “What does the West want?” and “What does the East want?” become central to understanding the current moment of transformation. The West seeks to preserve technological leadership, secure economic superiority, control migration, and prevent the rise of competing civilizational powers. It also aims to impose liberal standards globally in matters of gender, identity, and open markets. By contrast, the East seeks autonomous development, unconditional sovereignty, a non-dissolvable identity, a strong but non-authoritarian state, and a meaningful position within the emerging international order.

Herein lies the core of the contemporary conflict: who has the authority to define the standards of the age? Should the human being be conceived as universal or identity-based? Should the state be neutral or cultural? Should the market be global or local? And should values be imposed or diversified? It is at this level of questioning that the new intellectual conflict between East and West is being determined.

To understand the necessity of the East’s repositioning, one must first recognize that it has spent two full centuries in a reactive posture-responding to colonialism, modernity, globalization, the liberal model, Islamophobia, accusations of violence, and narratives of backwardness. This defensive condition rendered the East an epistemic object, operating within a conceptual space defined by others. Today, however, a genuine opportunity exists to break free from this constraint.

Reproducing the East as an active civilizational actor requires a methodological framework built on four interrelated levels. The first is the construction of a developmental–civilizational model, not merely an economic one-one that integrates social justice with innovation, protects identity, enhances cultural soft power, embeds technological ethics, and articulates a spiritual discourse reconciled with science. The second level involves developing a competitive epistemic discourse-one that does not replicate Orientalism, political Islam, cultural dependency, or liberal proselytism, but instead advances a new Arab intellectual school inspired by Asian developmental experiences and grounded in sovereignty, competence, ethics, knowledge, and identity.

The third level entails building Eastern cultural soft power not solely through religion, but through cinema, literature, universities, research centers, translation, digital platforms, and innovation economies-so that the East becomes a participant in shaping the world’s collective imagination. The fourth level is the transition from reaction to agenda-setting: moving from the question “How do we respond to the West?” to “What are our priorities?” and “What is our vision for the world?” It is here that a new civilizational positioning takes shape.

Accordingly, the conflict between East and West is no longer about religion, colonialism, borders, or the old “clash of civilizations,” but about a deeper question: who can offer a narrative capacious enough for the human being of the twenty-first century? The West has lost its capacity to provide a unified universal narrative, while the East possesses a historic-perhaps unprecedented-opportunity, for the first time in five centuries, to present a new civilizational alternative. This alternative is neither Islamist, nationalist, nor socialist, but one grounded in identity, competence, ethics, technology, and development.

Within this context, the most pressing question becomes: how can the East reposition itself within the global epistemic order? This requires, first and foremost, a shift from reaction to action. For two centuries, the East’s relationship with the West was defined by reactive responses, epistemic dependency, and the importation of ready-made theories. A new positioning demands the production of knowledge rather than its consumption. The conflict must be understood not as a clash of cultures, but as a struggle over the production of meaning and civilizational imagination.

The structural transformations within the West, the decline of its universal narrative, the rise of global pluralism, and the parallel emergence of the post-Islamist phase in the East all indicate that the global intellectual order is being fundamentally reconfigured. The East is no longer merely required to defend itself, but to redefine its role within this emerging system.

References

Acharya, Amitav. The End of American World Order. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018.

Bayat, Asef, ed. Post-Islamism: The Many Faces of Political Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992.

Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Mounk, Yascha. The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.

Roy, Olivier. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.

[1] The concept of the “Clash of Civilizations” refers to the theoretical framework proposed by Samuel Huntington in 1993, which argues that the post–Cold War era would witness a shift in the epicenter of global conflict—from ideological and political competition to confrontation among major cultural–civilizational units, such as Western, Islamic, and Confucian civilizations. This framework rests on the assumption that civilizational and religious identity constitutes the primary determinant of the behavior of states and societies, and that the fault lines between civilizations will become the principal arenas of tension within the international system.

[2] The concept of Orientalism, as articulated in Orientalism by Edward Said (1978), refers to an epistemic–discursive system through which the West has produced representations of the East, portraying it as a static, backward, and irrational world, in contrast to a rational, modern, and superior West. Said argues that these representations are not merely descriptive, but function as instruments of power designed to legitimize colonial domination and to regulate the East both epistemically and politically. In this framework, the East is rendered an object of knowledge and control rather than an active subject capable of participating in the production of knowledge.

[3] Western Episteme refers to the epistemic structure through which the West defines the standards of truth, rationality, and progress, and which has long constituted the dominant framework for knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities. It denotes the intellectual and epistemological system through which the West constructs its vision of the world—that is, the framework that determines what counts as knowledge, how truth is understood, what constitutes rationality, and how values, modernity, and progress are defined. This episteme operates not only through universities and scientific disciplines, but also through language, cultural representations, globalization processes, international organizations, and even through dominant academic paradigms in international relations and the social sciences. Examples include the narrative of European modernity as a universal benchmark of development, the centrality of the autonomous individual as a foundational epistemic model, and the colonial structure of knowledge that presupposes Western epistemic superiority over other societies. A growing body of thinkers argues that the world is gradually moving beyond the monopoly of the Western episteme, as evidenced by the rise of China, India, and Africa, the expansion of decentralized forms of knowledge production, and sustained critiques of European modernity. From this perspective, the contemporary world is shifting toward epistemic pluralism, rather than merely political pluralism.