Well, I wrote that book in the 1980s. I was studying global politics and teaching courses on global politics and became convinced that the ideas I set forth in my “Clash of Civilizations” article in 1993 were ideas that deserved attention and many elaboration. They obviously got a lot of attention, much of it critical, but that showed they had a certain bite. So when I went on to elaborate them in the book, I did so in a more systematic way.

In this final part of the interview, I would like to address identity and its relation to global politics. Your colleague Amartya Sen at Harvard recently published a book, “Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny,” in which he criticizes your argument along the lines that “identity is not destiny” and that each individual can construct and reconstruct chosen identities. He argues that the clash of civilizations theory comes from “miniaturization of human beings,” meaning that all human beings are reduced to “unique and choiceless identity made to fit into the boxes of civilization.”  In other words, Sen argues that humans have the ability to define themselves in numerous other ways. What is your perspective on citizens who have multiple identities?

I think that statement by Amartya Sen is totally wrong. I never argue that and I realize that people have multiple identities. What I argue in my book, as I indicated earlier, is that the basis of association and antagonism among countries has changed over time. In the coming decades, questions of identity, meaning cultural heritage, language, and religion will play a central role in politics. I first elaborated this idea over 10 years ago, and much of what I said has been validated during that time.

How do you negotiate people with multiple identities, say, a Muslim or a Jewish person who lives in America and who may have these two identities. How do they negotiate that?

They work out accommodations and that’s been done for the past two or three centuries at least. When you have increased migration of peoples and ethnic and religious minorities, you develop a set of rules and language the larger society can accept and the minority community can accept. The larger society has to recognize some degree of autonomy for the minority: the right to practice their own religion and way of life and to some extent their language. Many of the most difficult questions concerning the role of ethnic minorities centers on language. To what extent are they educated in their own language or in the national language? To what extent does the society formally or informally become a country of two national languages? Or is only one language used in the public proceedings, courts, legislatures, executive branch, and politics? These, as we know, can become very tricky issues.

Your argument focuses on identity as one of the core movers in global politics. How do you think that fundamentalism — the radical idea that one’s own identity is superior to all others — influences global politics today? Do you think there is a particular radicalism that is only associated with Islam or do you think it exists in all faiths?

I think fundamentalism is what you said: this radical attitude toward one’s own identity and civilization as compared to other people’s identities and cultures. Fundamentalist tendencies and movements existed, so far as I know, in all societies and civilizations. Certainly here in the U.S., we’ve had fundamentalist movements that have taken very critical and hostile attitudes toward immigration and the assimilation of immigrants into our society and culture. So these tendencies are fairly universal. The problem is what if they get out of hand and become the dominant factor in a society, which can only lead to the oppression of minorities or even to war with neighboring societies with differing cultures. That’s why it seems to me it’s important to try to keep these tendencies toward extremism under control.

In considering your most recent book, why are there more tensions among Muslims and other groups in European societies as opposed to America, where Muslims seem to be better adjusted? How would this relate to your thesis about identity and culture in regard to Hispanic communities in the United States?

First of all, the biggest difference as far as Muslims in Europe and America are concerned is that the number of Muslims in America is small compared to the number in Europe. Secondly, those that are here have come across several thousands of miles of oceans, not just walking across the border or taking a short boat ride across the Mediterranean. We don’t border on Muslim countries. European countries do and that seems to be a fundamental difference.