:) = :)

As an international relations student, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is one of those arguments that I know by heart. I’ve discussed and debated it in too many classes and honestly I could do without seeing Huntington’s thesis for a while. So, when I saw that my reading assignment for yesterday was none other than my fave Huntington, I wanted to scream a little. What was interesting about yesterday, however, was the format in which the discussion would take place. As a teacher at Mohammed V University, my professor invited us to join one of his classes and discuss the article with his students. For those of you who may not know about Huntington’s clash, here’s a brief summary:

Since the end of the Cold War, a new world order has emerged in which the fault lines of conflict are culturally tied as opposed to the political and economic motivations of the past. What Huntington eventually comes to describe is a clash between the Western civilization and the Islamic civilization in which the differences between these two cultures stand in opposition to one another. This opposition is the new source of tension and conflict.

Now, imagine a room with American exchange students sitting on one side and Moroccan graduate students sitting on the other. A visual representation of Huntington’s clash? Maybe the tensions were a bit high in the beginning as they naturally would be when two groups are set at odds with one another. But then, somewhere in the middle of our discussion, a Mohammed V student raised his hand and offered his own take on the supposed rift between us and them. He described two children playing with two different toys, one expensive, and the other cheap. Then he said, “Even if the toys are different, the smile is the same. We all sleep the same way, and we all love the same way.”

I can’t say that I’m idealistic enough to fully believe this myself, but his thought did make me smile. a lot.