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Arshin Adib-Moghaddam has emerged as one of the leading intellectuals of his generation. His writings have penetrated many fields including Middle Eastern Studies, International Relations, Post-Colonial studies, Comparative Politics and Historiography. Currently, Adib-Moghaddam is Reader in Comparative Politics and International Relations at SOAS, University of London and the Chair of the Centre for Iranian Studies. He is the author of A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and them beyond Orientalism which has been published by Hurst & Co. in London and Columbia University Press in New York. He has also written The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A cultural genealogy (Routledge, 2006, 2009) and Iran in World Politics: The question of the Islamic Republic (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2008, 2010). Educated at the Universities of Hamburg, American University (Washington DC) and Cambridge, he was the first Jarvis Doctorow Fellow in International Relations and Peace Studies at St. Edmund Hall and the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. At Cambridge, where he completed his MPhil and PhD as a scholarship student, he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge European Trust Society.

His writings have been translated into many languages and he is a frequent contributor to leading and alternative newspapers and TV channels around the world. Adib-Moghaddam has lectured globally on topics ranging from Iranian and west-Asian politics, US foreign policy, Islamophobia, critical theory, comparative political thought and the myth of a clash of civilisations. He is also active in digital engagement through his website (www.adib-moghaddam.info), facebook, and twitter.

His newest book, On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today, will be published by Bloomsbury.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam answers questions as part of an ongoing series marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations?" in Foreign Affairs.

You have authored "The Metahistory of the Clash of Civilizations," from your perspective:  What does the "Clash of Civilizations" mean? More specifically, what did Huntington mean by it? What is meant by those who continue to employ it today? 

With The Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations I was tracing how the idea that we are embroiled in a civilisational battle between “us” and “them” came about. I researched and wrote the book during a period when the so called “wars on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq recreated the myth that there is such a thing as a civilisational war between Islam and the west. I read the book of Huntington for the first time in German as a student at the University of Hamburg and then again in English as a PhD student at Cambridge. In both instances I found it utterly unconvincing. Huntington presented a theory of conflict without an empirical basis. As a student of political science and international relations this seemed unacceptable to me. The idea that there is such a thing as civilisational entities and that they can clash didn’t seem to appreciate the complexities of world politics.

So I took the opportunity of a generous research fellowship at Oxford University to start writing the book. I came to the conclusion that Huntington presented a theory of conflict nurtured by a good deal of unscholarly ignorance of other cultures. Huntington’s thesis is deceptively facile. It follows three methodological steps: Civilisations are cultural entities; cultures don’t change; given that “our” culture is different from “theirs” we are bound to be embroiled in a recurrent battle over supremacy in world politics. It seemed to me that the historical context was important too. Huntington wrote the article and the subsequent book after the demise of the Soviet Union. As a Cold War theorist who was always also close to decision-making circles in the United States, he wanted to alert policy makers that the end of the global competition between the Soviet Union and the west will usher into a new period characterised by civilisational conflicts, primarily between the west and Islam and what Huntington terms the “Confucian world.” From this perspective, the west is pitted against an increasingly assertive “rest”.

More research into representations of “self” and “other” both in Europe and in texts written by Muslim thinkers revealed that the theory of Huntington was not isolated; that it perpetuates an ancient myth that there is such a thing as civilisational entities and that they can clash. I started to conduct this second phase of my research upon my acceptance of my current position at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London about three years before I finished the book. This period informed the historical sections. I was increasingly convinced that the clash of civilisations is one of the most inaccurate theories ever invented. Huntington was not educated in the history of Islam. In his writings he routinely conflated being Arab with........

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