MUSLIM CHALLENGES IN THE POST-MODERNIST 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 human rights, gender equality, democracy, and modernization do not often concur with those of the United States and the West- particularly among Islamist fundamentalists. And yet the fruits of globalization -- technology, international business opportunity, and access to foreign goods -- do tempt many Muslim leaders. Thus, there exists a troubling split within Muslim states; David Pryce-Jones, in his article "Twilight of the Ayatollahs: Islamic Fundamentalism is on the Wane," exp...