Globalisation and its Challenges
Ibrahim Musawi
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put an end to bipolarity in world politics and ushered in a new, U.S.A. controlled unipolar world order. The 1991 Gulf War, which the U.S.A. waged against Iraq to reinstate Kuwait’s independence, gave shape and meaning to how Washington defined the rules of the game in the new world order, better known as the age of globalisation. Richard Higgott defines globalisation from a Third World perspective as follows:
Globalisation is a multiplicity of linkages and interconnections that transcend the nation state (and by implication the societies) which make up the modern world system. It defines a process through which events, decisions and activities in one part of the world can come to have a significant consequence for individuals and communities in quite distant parts of the globe…. [It] is what we in the Third World have for centuries called colonization. [Richard Higgott, Globalisation and Regionalization: New Trends in World Politics. (Abu Dhabi, UAE: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, Emirates Lecture No. 13, 1998), pp.1-2.]
As such, globalisation has come under sharp criticism from almost every direction: environmentalists, social democrats, modernizing states, all shades in the left and Muslims, be they mainstream or militant. Their grievances against globalisation range from the damage major industrial nations are causing to the biosphere, overexploitation of renewable resources, surface and deepwater contamination, cultural invasion and emaciation of heritage of Third World countries, in addition to ever increasing inequalities in income distribution. [For more on this, see John Wiseman, “Alternatives to Oppressive Globalisation,” in eds., Stephen McBride and John Wiseman, Globalisation and its Discontents. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp.214-215.]
Muslim societies see themselves particularly vulnerable to the impact of globalisation on their lives and religion. In the words of Maha Azzam, one of Muslims’ main concerns is that they do not see themselves involved in the formulation of globalisation policies, or “… can gain sufficient control over it to benefit economically or technologically while suppressing any threat to the religious and cultural make-up of their societies.” [Maha Azzam, “Between the Market and God: Islam, globalisation and Culture in the Middle East,” in eds., Toby Dodge and Richard Higgott, Globalisation and the Middle East: Islam, Economy, Society and Politics. (London, UK: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2002), p. 152.] Arabs and Muslims express great apprehension about the impact of globalised media (especially the internet, mobiles, and satellite T.V. viewing) on the value system of young people, and its repercussions on the fabric of Muslim society.
The End of Time Muslim World Order
Muslim movements identify two tracks of action in order to succeed in creating an Islamic order that would bring peace and justice to the world: one national and the other transnational. At the national level they aim to undo the steady secularization of Islamic society that has been growing for more than two centuries. They strive to re-introduce Islamic social, religious and political values. To this extent, they see the national political system and the ruling elite as corrupted Western creations unworthy of governance. Ira Lapidus reaches a similar conclusion: “Now the neo-Islamic revivalist movements… denounce this trend and call for a return to a state that represents and embodies Islam and enforces an Islamic way of life.” [Ira M. Lapidus, “State and Religion in Islamic Societies,” Past and Present, no. 151, 1996, p. 4.]
The Islamic movement has not so far been able to dictate its plans on society, and found itself compelled to cope with the formidable apparatus of the state’s security and administrative apparatus. Writing on the state of affairs of the Islamic movement in Egypt and Malaysia, Jan Stark recognizes the limitations of the Islamic militant movement in both countries: “Far from being the monolithic threat perceived, Islamic militancy has… been weakened by the onslaught of the state, whose resources, having both the entire legal instrumentarium and the security apparatus at its disposal, are certainly considerable.” [Jan Stark, “Beyond ‘Terrorism’ and ‘State Hegemony’: Assessing the Islamist Mainstream in Egypt and Malaysia,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 2, 2005, p. 317.]
Nowhere in the world of Sunni Islam has any religious movement been able to dislodge the existing political system. The Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccan and Saudi Arabian examples attest to the eventual subservience of the Islamic movement to state authority.
American occupation of Iraq in 2003 has presented new opportunities for the beleaguered Islamic movement. Unable to achieve a politico-military breakthrough at the home front, they saw in the arrival of U.S.A. troops to Iraq an apocalyptic opportunity to settle the historical conflict between good and evil. The complex and multi-faceted insurgency in Iraq has, at least in one of its components, become a battleground between mortal enemies claiming ideological purity and spiritual righteousness. In a dated book, although still quite relevant today, Mulay Muhammad Ali condemns Western civilization and materialism for what he deemed their incapability of maintaining world peace. He blames “rapacious Western materialism” [Mulay Muhammad Ali, Al-Islam wa al-Nidham al-Alami al-Jadid [Islam and the new world order], translated into Arabic by Ahmad Joda al-Sahhar. (Cairo, Egypt: Maktabat Misr wa Matba‘atiha, 1942), p. 12.] for the two world wars in the twentieth century; he chastises Christianity for concerning itself with heavenly spiritual matters, and dismissing earthly concerns for lying outside its jurisdiction. [Ibid., 14-15.] Ali does not forget to pay tribute to Islam as the “greatest civic force the world has ever known.” [Ibid., 20.] He passionately Islam’s harmonizing credentials, which are better suited than Western liberal for leading humanity to lasting peace and justice. [Ibid., 21.]
Conclusion
The second half of the twentieth century presented Arabs and Muslims with doctrinal, economic and political` challenges of grave consequences. Action on them required their success in redefining themselves to comply with the cardinal issue of modernization. The failure of their efforts despite serious efforts by the ruling elite in many Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, eventually drove freshly mobilized segments of society to seek a solution in militant Islam. Both the consolidation of the authority of authoritarian political leaderships and inadequate effective communication with the West finally permitted the apocalyptic dimension of Islam to rise to the fore of the political scene. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the emergence of the U.S.A. as the world’s sole superpower made Washington less sensitive to issues that Muslims regard as matters of high principle such as the inviolability of territorial integrity, cultural identity, and unconditional support for the Jewish state. The present wave of Islamic insurgency, which Iraq has become its battleground rests on tenuous ideological underpinnings and remains containable.
Ibrahim El Moussaoui, June 13 2005
