LAHORE, May 16: Globalization can avert the clash of civilizations and unite the world on the basis of the development in science and technology.

This was stated by noted historian Dr Mubarak Ali while speaking at a meeting of the Rotary Club, Lahore, here on Thursday.

He said that the theory of the clash of civilizations advanced by historian Hattington in his famous book published after the end of cold war between the West and former Soviet Union had been criticized by many historians of the world who perceive no danger of any such clash.

Hattington had based his thesis on the assumption that Islam and Confucius religions of the Muslims and the people of China and Japan respectively would pose threat to the western civilization.

“Religion is not the only element of any civilization but it is one of the many factors which shape a civilization.”

He said that Karl Marx had in the 19th century said that the history was based on class struggle and that there would be no history once the class distinctions were put to end.

This agitated the minds of the people whether there would be no history if the class struggle ended.

This theory was, however, challenged by the Chinese historians who said that there would be no end of history though there may not be conflicts.

Dr Mubarak Ali said that the history was replete with the conflicts of the nations starting from the days of the Greeks who had divided the then world between the civilized and barbarian people and they considered themselves to be former and all the rest latter.

Much later in the 16th and 17th centuries when the white races of Europe discovered America they called the original inhabitants of the New World as savages and not barbarians. Later when they developed good relations with them they were called noble savages.

He called it a dehumanization process which, he said, every conquering nation applied to the conquered to prove themselves to be superior to the latter with a right to destroy them for being uncivilized and uncultured.

The French had set up colonies in different parts of the world assuming themselves the only race of the civilized people.

In the present times, he said, the words savages and barbarians had been replaced by terrorists and the US President Bush was on record having referred to the clash of civilizations after the September 11 event.

Even before that event when Bush Sr had attacked Iraq he had described the people of Iraq uncivilized though Iraq was the seat of three major ancient civilizations of the world.

He said that the west often mentions about the clash of civilizations because of its fear of clash with the Muslims like the crusades between Islam and Christianity in the mediaeval times when the former had captured the latter’s countries.

The crusades continued for long period to recapture the places the Muslims had conquered.

He said that the conflicts of civilizations had a brighter side also in the form of cooperation in various fields and exchange of knowledge. He said that the Christians had learnt a lot from the Muslims who in their turn had been benefited from the Greeks.

He said that Tariq Ali had written a book in which says that it was not the clash of civilizations but clash of fundamentalists. He said that Tariq Ali’s theory had proved right judging from the recent events caused by the Hindu fundamentalists in Gujarat, and by Israeli is Palestine.

This demonstration of barbarism was not clash of civilizations but fundamentalism, he added.