Current “Muslim-West clash” not the real clash, author says

<p>Ever since 9-11, the phrase “clash of civilizations” has been bandied about in the press and in gatherings of people, conjuring up images of a clash between a “Muslim monolith bent on violence, and the democratic cultures of Europe and North America.”<br /><br />Martha Nussbaum, a professor at the University of Chicago, disagrees that such a clash is the most worrisome possibility in the world today.<br /><br />Instead, she writes in her book “The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future,” that the real clash “is not a civilizational one between “Islam’ and ‘the West,’ but instead a clash within virtually all modern nations – between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on term of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition.”<br /><br />Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, will discuss this idea in a free lecture, titled ”The Clash Within: Religion, Pluralism, and the Future of Democracy,” at 4:30 p.m., March 31 in the Great Hall at Armstrong Hall.<br /><br />The free lecture is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. It is part of the “Religion and Conflict: Alternative Visions” lecture series.<br /><br />Nussbaum, who teaches in the areas of law, ethics, political science, the classics and comparative literature, also is a prolific writer. Her most recent book is “Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of American’s Tradition of Religious Equality.”<br /><br />For more information about the lecture, and the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, contact Carolyn Forbes, (480) 965-1096, or mailto:carolyn.forbes@asu.edu.</p&gt;