Globalization And The Middle East-II

Also See: GlobalizationAnd The Middle East -I

Islamic fundamentalism is often understood as a straight return into a distant past. Its ideology of arevival of the Prophet Muhammad's political message is seen aimed at countering the impetus of modernizationin many countries of the Middle East. Equally, it has often been said that Muslim fundamentalism has turnedthe Middle East into a region which is most successfully - and most tragically - opposed to the effects ofglobalization. The world of 2003 has become a much smaller place than the one of the Prophet Muhammed, andIslamic law, its critics say, is ill-suited to serve a globalized citizenry.

But if globalization is taken to mean increased inter-dependence and interaction in a world reduced in sizeby the revolutions in transportation and communication, then this could be not further from the truth. Islamicfundamentalism has been, in fact, strengthened by globalization. In the Middle East it is one of its drivingforces. 

Muslim fundamentalist movements are benefiting from an increase in the flow of information, speed ofcommunication, and mobility more than any other political movements in the region. Their vision of aglobalized society, however, is quite different from the pleasure-seeking, profit-driven western lifestylethat is being promoted by the globalization that we focus upon most. The Islamists' ideal of a globalizedsociety is the network-connection of all "real" Muslims and their organizations in order to promotetheir definition of Islam.and what they view as "Islamic."

Globalization should not be equated with the Westernization of the world. A close look into the Islamicworld reveals that it does indeed actively participate in the various processes of globalization, probablyeven more than many other regions of the world, and that Islamist movements are one of globalization's motors.The Islamic world itself has become something like an "Islamic village" mainly due to the activitiesof the Islamist groups. The technological advances of the 20th century led to a kind of globalization in theIslamic world that has yet to be recognized in its full scope.

For the West, the most visible expression of globalization in the Islamic world were the attacks ofSeptember 11. The terrorist attacks of that day are the result of what might be called the globalization ofseveral civil wars and political conflicts between Islamists, military governments, like Syria and Algeria, ormonarchical governments like the kingdoms of the Arabia Peninsula, led by Saudi Arabia. The attacks were theterrible consequence of a strategic decision on the part of the most radical Islamist movements stemming fromtheir defeat in many Muslim countries. 

The developments of the national jihad in Muslim countries like, forinstance, Algeria and Egypt, were remarkably similar. In the years between 1992 and 1997, both nations sawextremely bloody battles in a war between militant Islamists who wanted to take over the governments of thesecountries and the military forces of these countries. The increasingly violent actions of the Islamists inthese two countries turned the masses against them and alienated their own supporters. 

Subsequently, both theleadership as well as many of the foot soldiers of the militant Islamist movements either made their peacewith the authorities or went into exile. Some became part of the Muslim diaspora in Europe where they wouldcontinue the work as a jihad vanguard despite their disconnection from the political issues that carried theirstruggle in their home countries. 

Others went to Afghanistan, where they had enjoyed a safe haven since the1992 overthrow of the communist regime. Here, they would meet those who earlier had left the Arab world inorder to fight in the Afghan jihad against Soviet occupation. The rest of the story is well known. Thedifferent strains of defeated Islamist movements were picked up and connected under the leadership of theSaudi renegade Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Their organization, al-Qaeda,is the first truly global terrorist network that would use e-mail, internet, frequent flyer miles, wiretransfers, and tourist, student, and refugee visas in order to organize a globalized jihad.

While globalization of the several armed struggles in the Muslim Middle East became frighteningly effectiveuntil the crackdown following September 2001, the militant Islamists claimed that globalization was also thecause of the new jihad. In their analysis of the defeat within their home countries it was not only theirincapacity to keep the connection with their mass base that led to their failure. The Islamist groups blamedthe West's and particularly America's active support of their enemy governments. 

In the case of Egypt, forinstance, they pointed to the roughly $5 billion that the U.S. pays annually to the government in Cairo. Whenthe military government in Algeria canceled its first democratic ballot scheduled in 1992, France, which tookthe leading role among the Western countries in this case, actively supported the military coup. In fact, themilitary government in Algiers became so attentive to Western support that at one time, the Islamists claimed,the authorities murdered a group of Italian sailors on board their ship in an Algerian harbor and staged theevent as if it has been committed by the Islamists. This was all done, it was claimed, in order to ensurecontinuing Western support in the conflict.

In an article in the Times Literary Supplement in March 2002, the commentator Navid Kermani argued that theattacks of September 11 could hardly be inspired by Islamic ideals but were rather nihilistic acts ofdestruction devoid of any political message. For the followers of the globalist jihad there certainly was amessage. The message al-Qaeda conveyed to its sympathizers was that of the effectiveness of a globalizedjihad. 

The globalized jihad had begun in 1996 with al-Qaeda's declaration of war against America and itscitizens, renewed in 1998 and in several of its videos since. The new jihad is being portrayed as the responseto the increasing influence of Western nations on countries of strategic importance for the West like Egypt orAlgeria that would become unable to decide their own future. 

The chosen targets of September 11 - Wall Street,White House, and the Pentagon - represent for al-Qaeda not simply the symbols of American economic, political,and military might. They would also be the places where the people whose decisions affect everybody's life incountries like Egypt and Algeria go to do their work. In the eyes of al-Qaeda, the victims of September 11were no innocents and not collateral casualties. 

They would be the ones who in the White House support theIslamists' enemies in the governments of the Middle East. They would also be the ones who in the Pentagondecide the deployment of troops in the region, or on Wall Street who devalue every single working hour in aforeign country if they choose to trade its currency with a point less than before.

But does it make sense that a globalized organization fights globalization? This statement becomes lesscontradictory once we understand that globalization may take more than one direction. We mostly think ofglobalization as a process where the ideas of Western modernity, of economic development in a capitalistmodel, and of Western cultural production are brought to other parts of the world. We fail to see, however,that other regions may seek their own kind of globalization. 

Although the Muslim community has seen aremarkable spread and is now present in countries where it was largely unknown 40 years ago, it is much moreuniform than it was back then. Traditionally each Muslim nation, each country, and sometimes even each regionhad its own way to practice Islam. Yemenite Islam was quite different from Moroccan Islam, for instance. Whilethese differences still exist, faster and more effective means of communication lead to the fact that books,websites, or TV programs written and produced in Morocco may today be found in Yemeni homes and the Yemenimarketplace. 

The widespread use of the Arab language in the Muslim world, as well as the strong sense of unityand uniformity that is part of the traditional Islamic teaching, gives it a headstart before other religiouscommunities. With the advent of satellite TV like Qatar-based al-Jazeera, local newspapers and TV stations,often controlled by the state, lost their monopoly on information. TV pictures broadcast from places likeJenin or Peshawar today often determine the subjects of a national debate that once seldom touched upon thesefaraway issues.

Advanced means of transportation led to the increase of annual pilgrims performing the traditional hajj toMecca from 79,000 in 1929 to 2 million by the 1980s. In fact, the most important forces pushing globalizationin the Islamic world are the petrodollars of the oil-rich states on the Arab peninsular. The petrodollarearnings of the migrating workforce, for instance, created an Islamic banking system that avoids fixedinterest rates and effectively connects most of the countries of the Middle East. 

The petrodollars spread bythe Saudi government also led to the construction of over 1,500 new mosques all over the Muslim world. Theflow of this money causes the same reactions that globalization has in the West. In Morocco, for instance,where for centuries minarets of mosques have always been built in a square shape, one now sees more and moreround minarets inspired by those in the rich Islamic east. Many Moroccans feel the same way about these roundminarets as Italians feel about a McDonald's restaurant in their old historic cities.

The most important effect of the globalization of the Islamic world was, however, the creation of astandard understanding for what the words "Islam" and "Islamic" mean. Prior to the changesthat came with faster information and higher mobility, the norms of what "Islamic" was in a societyand what was not were decided on a local, regional, or national level. Each country had the opportunity tofind its own interpretation of the Islamic message. 

This, however, has become increasingly difficult once themore conservative groups within the Islamist movements found the support of the Saudi government's resources.The affinity of Wahhabism, the local branch of Islam predominant in Saudi Arabia, with conservative Islamicfundamentalism of widely read authors' like Sayyid Qutb or Mawlana Mawdudi, led to a joining of forces. As aresult, the norms of what is regarded as "Islamic" in the globalized world are less and less set bythe local traditions of interpreting Islam, but increasingly by a joint version of the standards of Wahhabismand Islamic fundamentalism.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard the developments in the Islamic world as a counter-globalizationagainst the one originated in the West. Instead of rejecting globalization, the Islamic world is finding itsown way of globalization. The two processes use the same means and the same tools and are indeed inseparable.They go, however, into different directions.

Muslim fundamentalist movements encourage the use of the internetamong their followers, for instance, not in order to sell something by e-mail order, but rather to promote thecreation of a network of like-minded people who share a common understanding of what "Islam" meansand what it advocates. These different directions should probably not be just reduced to two - one pro-Westernand one that is countering the West's impact. 

While Westernization is clearly the most dominant direction ofglobalization, one finds on a closer look that other processes of globalization are going on which takevarious directions. The lack of exchange that we currently have between these global networks, particularlybetween the networks of the West and the Muslim world, can only be overcome by greater and much more opencommunication and exchange. Globalization means both giving and taking. Here, it would call for more listeningto the other in order to avoid that they continue to talk only to themselves.

Frank Griffel is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of ReligiousStudies at Yale University.
Copyright: YaleGlobal.