Challenges to Muslims in the Post-Modern World

Our world, the adage goes, is shrinking. In the emerging configuration, the trend of "globalization" -- fueled by new technologies and an ethic of free-trade -- continues to connect the nations of the world in unprecedented fashion. All over the planet, globalization is gathering momentum, as individual nations opt to trade in national sovereignty for economic integration into an international market, and individual citizens the world over grow increasingly more exposed to foreign ideas, values, and lifestyles. In this, cultural distinctions are susceptible to aggravation as the world globalizes; integration often leads to homogenization, and many fear that in a globalized world, independent cultures will not be able to withstand the barrage of so many foreign practices and ideologies. Nowhere in the world is this fear more alive than in the Muslim states.

Globalization is above all else an economic endeavor -- it relies heavily upon the spread of free-market capitalism. And capitalism, the specialty of the United States and other Western democracies, affords Westernized nations the inside track in the globalization experiment. As a consequence, the international market has thus far been dominated by American business and technology, and many have dubbed globalization merely Americanization on a global scale.

For Muslim nations, this is a particularly alarming prospect, as Muslim conceptions of h

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mple, it is possible for a woman who has been raped to be legitimately charged with committing zina, which refers to any form of sex out of wedlock. If she is a married woman, rape is considered adultery and can result in her being stoned to death. If she is unmarried, the rape is considered mere fornication, punishable with 100 lashes and many years of prison. In Iran, as another example, girls are legally declared fit for marriage by the age of nine, and can be sent off as brides with men five times their age. Obviously, Western ideology maintains quite a different stance on issues of gender. And of course, often Muslims are displeased to see the effects of these Western gender ideas: high divorce rates, statutory rape laws, no dress codes for women, and sex-discrimination lawsuits. Arranged marriages are not the custom, nor is any sort of sociological separation of the sexes. As the West matures, women and men occupy more and more similar roles in society. Islam, even in its least subversive interpretations, continues to maintain the need for a degree of separation between the sexes. The media perceptions of the West tend to highlight these differences. The image of an Islamic woman shuffling down the street draped
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Approximate Word count = 1790
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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