A World Not Neatly Divided

In the article, “A World Not Neatly Divided,” the author, Amartya Sen, talks about how civilization will clash when categorized into a single group. The fact that civilization will clash is not the topic that needs to be debated. The topic that is of interest is why there needs to be identification based on culture. The division of civilizations based on culture hinders the establishment of world peace so therefore promoting clash and war. An entire civilization cannot be fit under one category because throughout that civilization there are multiple beliefs and ideas that differ from each other. I agree with Sen about everything he states in this article due to the well thought out examples and due to my own experiences.
Classifying civilization reveals the actual division of people within the civilization. Sen states “civilizations are hard to partition in this way, given the diversities within each society as well as the linkages among different countries and cultures.” (Sen). Sen goes on to explain how India is considered a “Hindu civilization” (Sen) when in fact it most likely has the third largest population of Muslims. People are quick to classify everyone into one group even before looking deeper into the
Both emperors preached completely different beliefs yet “The Islamic fundamentalist would have no time for Akbar; Prime Minister Tony Blair, given his insistence that tolerance is a defining characteristic of Islam, would have to consider excommunicating Aurangzeb.” (Sen). These two were supposed to be a part of the “Islamic World” (Sen) but both do not promote Islamic values. Why categorize them into the “Islamic World” then? I completely agree with everything that Sen talks about. There are so many different characteristics that people can be grouped together by so “religion, important as it may be, cannot be an all-engulfing identity.”