The 21st century kultur kampf : fundamentalist Islam against occidental culture

Abstract

Many writers have tried to highlight the intricacies of the upsurge of fundamentalist Islam against occidental culture. The present article is an attempt to apply the mechanisms of the second law of thermodynamics inherent in the process of entropy to social entropy and the relationship of fundamentalist Islam with the social change in the Middle East. We have taken the physical entropy in closed system, as developed by Sidi Carnot and Ilya Prigogine in biology, and applied it to the mechanism of social entropy: the carnivorous occidental colonialist powers have discovered oil in the Middle East, devouring with their aggressive high-entropy cultures the peace, quite and traditional cultures of the Middle East, which were hardly more than Bedouin tribal social aggregates. These cultures were traditionally low-entropy and they have been exploded and exploited by the colonial powers. Consequently, the traditional societies were disrupted, their family integrity was destroyed, and their morals were degenerated by alcohol, drugs, prostitutions and uncontrolled consumption - all alien to their native cultures. Fundamentalist Islam extremists conducted a backlash and a desire to revert back to the ascetic grassroots of Islam. In the process, they wrought vengeance on occidental culture which they regarded as responsible for their social and personal miseries. Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and violence is quite possibly the result of this clash between the high-entropy of the oil-exploiting powers and the low entropy of the traditional tribal societies.