Here's a definitional system for you. Several cultures that are inter-accessible between themselves but not accessible from the outside are a civilization. An ability to measure success and failure -- the ethos -- comes with a civilization, not culture. Thus Mexican peasants and British engineers intermingle without conflict in California, -- both are cultures inside the Western Civilization.
The warrior Arab civilization we are facing has a different ethos -- it is not accessible to us. That civilization also comprises several cultures. It is also thinly spread: no Arab nation consists entirely of "warriors".
I contend that the essential component part of "Civilization" is a Body of Law that preempts both the will of tyrants -- and the tyranny of the mob. [AKA "democracy"]
Another apparently essential component part seems to involve the Judeo-Christian foundation of being created in God's image and striving valiantly to achieve as close to that image as is humanly posible.
Our Beloved FRaternal and Constitutional Republic, [Not, note well, a "democracy!!"] America -- by far and away the cutting edge of Human Civilization -- and essentially a Judeo-Christian Nation -- has been the cradle of so much creativity, innovation and productivity because, having, uniquely among nations, been Founded in -- and standing on -- the Principle of Individual Liberty -- and recognising as God-given -- and therefore inalienable by man or government -- the Constitutionally-Guaranteed Absolute Right of every man to the pursuit of all that is vital to his own life -- every man has been FRee -- as never before in the entire history of our species -- to pursue and to attempt to achieve his own vision of his own God's Image!
All other modern cultures, including those of the "tigers" and of Japan, have essentially failed to produce a sustainable wealth because they pursue only the material, by which the West's success appears to be measured -- either without understaning -- or being unwilling to embrace -- the underlying Moral Integrity -- and accompanying Rule of Law.
China, often [Falsely] held up as a 5000-year "civilization" was only a hundred and fifty years ago soundly defeated [And will never forget it!] in a war with a handful of Britons in a few sailing ships at the end of a ten-thousand-miles-long supply line! And for all of its much-trumpeted "5000-years of 'civilization,'" -- and quite long exposure to Western Civilization -- to this day has never even managed to put together a government worthy of the name -- and is ruled as if [And is!] a medieval serfdom, by a mass-murdering gang of self-appointed thuggees.