Samuel P. Huntington is the name of the current global conflict as "Clash of Civilization" through his book entitled The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of the World Order (1996). The reason is that the source of human conflict today is no longer ideological, political, or economic, but cultural.
This is because everyone now tends to identify with cultural identity. If culture or civilization is an identity, then the identity of civilization itself is a worldview. So the clash of civilizations indicates a clash of worldviews.
Many disagree with Huntington. Maybe because it's superficial or provocative. As if different cultures could mean war.
But Huntington is not without supporters. Peter Berger, for example, agrees that the current political conflict is the collision of consciousness (clash of consciousness or perception), another word for the clash of civilization. But the choice of words, clash, and collision are vulgar, still less gentle than the words of al-Attas divergence of worldviews. But is it true that now there is a clash of civilizations?
Almost all agree that every civilization has a worldview. Germany first had the term weltanschauung, welt = world, anschauung = perception, meaning the perception of the world.
In Italy, the term "conception of the world" is used. In French the word weltanschauung is borrowed and means "a metaphysical view of the world and the conception of life", in Russia it is called Mirovozzrenie which means world view.
And all agree that the word worldview must be bound by cultural, religious, or scientific predicates. So, for example, the terms Christian Worldview, Medieval Worldview, Scientific Worldview, Modern worldview, and the Worldview of Islam. All have an exclusive perspective. But everyone knows there is a process of borrowing between civilizations, between world views.
Perhaps this is why in the West it is easy to accept denominations based on the worldview rather than "religion". Hegel, for example, when he read Hindu theology he spontaneously accepted it as Indischen weltanschauung. Even Ninian Smart made the worldview a tool to explore human beliefs (crosscultural explorations of human beliefs).
There are many layers of meaning in the worldview. Discussing the worldview is like sailing into an endless sea (journey into the landless sea), said Nietsche. However, in the West, the problem of the worldview remains only as far as the five senses. The breadth of the worldview for Kant, Hegel, and also Goethe was limited to the sense world (Mundus Sensibilis).
But for Shaikh Atif al-Zayn it is not the extent that matters, but where it starts, then the worldview is the Mabda (place of origin). There can be seen the meaning spectrum of the worldview. Meanwhile, the worldview of Islam as described by al-Attas is not as narrow as the extent of the oceans on the planet Earth, but as wide as the scale of being, Ruyat al-Islam Lil Wujud.
Making the worldview a matrix of religion, civilization, belief or others is fine. Because the worldview can be measured from what is in people's minds. Therefore, in layers in the worldview, there is a conceptual framework.
It would not be wrong if Dilthey then made it the principle of an objective epistemological formulation. The worldview then functions as the principle of the social sciences (Dilthey) and the natural sciences (Kant). Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) even transformed the worldview into a paradigm that provides certain values, standards, and methodologies that strongly bind scientific work.
He even calls it a disciplinary matrix that has composed elements. This reminds us of the words of Husserl in the Crisis of European Sciences, that the worldview is ultimately similar to individual religious beliefs.
On the one hand, this is the dynamic of positive thinking. In short, paradigm and worldview have structured conceptual variables, which process into a framework of thought, and scientific disciplines. That is why science is full of values, aka not neutral.
In Islam, no matter how far our mind goes about adventure, revelation remains the torch. Al-Quran itself is full of conceptual schemes. Sciences such as fiqh, hadith, tafsir, Falak, Tabiah, reckoning, and so on are the derivations of the concepts in revelation.
This means that the worldview of the Koran has produced a framework and scientific discipline that is also exclusive. Western people, for example, cannot adopt the Tadil and Tajrih method of hadith science, or adopt the science of Faraid in Islam, and so on.
Conversely, Muslims also cannot accept the dichotomous theory of truth: objective and subjective. Nor can it accept Freud's doctrine of pan-sexualism, Darwin's doctrine of evolution, and so on. Every theory or concept departs from the framework and each framework is derived from the worldview.
If I am forced to agree with Huntington, then I am only agreeing on the epistemological plane. Even then, if this is included in Huntington's thesis. On this plain, it looks like nothing has happened, there is no social conflict, especially weapons.
His weapon is the pen of thinkers, which in Islam counts as a martyr's sword. As a result, it is invisible. It's just that here and there there is intellectual confusion and loss of identity. But here the term clash of worldview is more accurately called worldview intrusion.
There are many examples that can prove that the thoughts of Muslims are now being possessed by the worldview of other civilizations. Many Muslim scholars or “scholars” have praised Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Thomas S. Kuhn, Derrida, et al., But criticized al-Asyari, al-Ghazzali, al-Shafii, and others.
There are also those who doubt whether the Koran is truly a revelation of Allah, whereas he believes in the pillars of faith. Now there are Muslim women who wear headscarves, but they protest why God is so masculine. In fact, it is not surprising that a supernaturalist with a black forehead is also a Marxist.
He understands the meaning of tauhid but does not know how to think about tauhid. His faith was not supported by reason so that his knowledge did not increase his faith. Muslim but the worldview and framework of thinking are not. That's the impact of the worldview intrusion.
For those who do not believe in Huntington's thesis, perhaps he believes in Derrida (1930-….). Because the Western intellectual tradition which Derrida called logocentrism has been broken down (deconstructed). The postmodern era has become the post-worldview era. No more worldview. There is no certainty about the truth about nature, let alone frameworks. All are free to understand all.
So there's no clash of worldview. But isn't Derrida carrying out his own worldview and framework? Humor is still a worldview for Wittgenstein, even though he is only a human illusion about the world. In Christian theology itself, the conflict of good and evil is considered a worldview conflict. The conflict between God's kingdom and Satan's kingdom.
So the clash of worldview or intrusion of worldview is not a war scenario, because it happens in us every day, in our minds and hearts. Therefore we need not only to be shown the essence of truth but also the path to truth.