Clash of Civilizations

After the collapse of bipolar system in the world, different views and theories expressed by the scholars and thinkers about the future of the world and international system. One of them is the theory of “ The Clash of Civilizations” which was propounded in 1993 by the Samuel Huntington, the director of J.M.Olin Institute for Strategic Studies in Harvard Uni-versity. This theory caused some anxieties in the world. In reaction to this theory, Mohammad Khatami, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, proposed “Dialogue Among Civilizations” as a paradigm in the international relations which was accepted by the 53rd General Assembly of the United Nations on 3 September 1998 and approved a resolution for the purpose of promoting dialogue among cultures and civiliza-tions, and called the year 2001 as “the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations”. This article based on both mentioned theories, refers to the role of dialogue approach in creation of peaceful relations between nations and states.

Modern Europe witnessed a historical simultaneity as the result of which , not only Europe ruptured from its own past, rather a forced attachment to the non- European's future was also forged. This historical "development" has been narrated in the "colonial discourse". On the other hand, for the non–Europeans, however, a different historical simultaneity took place. Hence; the colonized/non -Europeans found themselves forcefully ruptured not only from their own selfhood, but also thrown in an imposed 'state of nature' dispossessed of their identity. This historical experience has been narrated in the "post-colonial discourse". The current paper is an attempt to host a 'meeting' between the colonial and the post-colonial discourses.

The Ummah's unity has been shattered by the divide-and-rule machinations of the US through its "Global War on Terror", seemingly rendering the dream of pragmatic geopolitical cooperation between the world's majority-Muslim states a political fantasy. The so-called "Clash of Civilizations" hasn't just been weaponized to provoke inter-civilizational conflicts, but also intra-civilizational ones too, which in the Ummah's case took the form of violent sectarianism. While "conventional knowledge" would suggest that there's no surmounting these obstacles in the near future, Iran might actually be able to pioneer a breakthrough if it revives and reforms the Old Cold War-era CENTO alliance of itself, Pakistan, Turkey, and Iraq in order to symbolically contradict the sectarian trend and enter into mutually beneficial strategic relations with its three most important neighbors.

Call of Duty is a popular first-person shooter (FPS) game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007) was the first game in the franchise which did not focus on the World Wars’ history. It was also the first Call of Duty which had a continuous interactive digital narrative (IDN). This article attempts to take a comparative approach to the game. As a cultural product, the game is susceptible to postcolonial and orientalist discourses. This article attempts to apply Edward Said’s theories to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in order to prove that the game’s IDN was shaped by postcolonialism and orientalism. The game functioned as a cultural medium which disseminated orientalist discourses amongst its player base. As such, this article tries to not only shed light upon a lesser-known aspect of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare but also to demonstrate that computer games are not exempt from external cultural forces.