2) On
that empirical basis alone we can, secondly, conclude that globalization
is not a surprising event but a natural, logical development. Superior
culture and its technology, like water, simply flow from higher
to lower levels, and there is nothing one can do about it. No government
could have succeeded in legislating the preservation of the cumbersome
Roman numerals once the elegance of Arab arithmetic had been perceived
by European bookkeepers.
Today, it is not Eastern values and gadgets that become universal but
Western products and procedures, but the mechanism is the same as
always. Responsible for this effect is not a particular decision
by specific people like Microsoft's Bill Gates or APPLE's Steven
Jobs - nor a conspiracy.Rather, today's globalization naturally
results from the dominance of Western science and technology, translated
into economic power and cultural attraction. During the last three
centuries, all scientific revolutions were achieved in the West:
microphysics, macrophysics, nuclear science, advanced mathematics,
brain research, all fields of medicine, computer science, nano and
communications technology - you name it.
When Alexandria was a center of learning, shortly before the beginning
of the Common Era, educated people there did not speak Coptic but
Greek. When during the 19th century German science was on the forefront
in most fields, it was natural for American scientists to learn
German and study in Gottingen. Today, it is the reverse: German
scientists all know English and go to M.I.T. or Stanford University.
Ancient Athens and Baghdad have been replaced, linguistically as
well, by Silikon Valley in Southern California.
3)
From these facts we can thirdly conclude that globalization
is not limited to the so-called 3rd or Developing World. Rather,
it is an intra - Occidental affair as well. Europeans, foremost
the French, feel equally threatened by Americanization, particularly
through the domination of Hollywood films When people in Europe
derogatively speak of "Macdonalization", they express
both frustration and anxiety about being swamped by everything American.
But the official protectors of the purity of the German or French
languages have no real chance.
The American-based technological slang of the
INTERNET and of computerization has already entered the "franglais"
of the "young upward mobile" French generation (YUPPIES)
and the speaking habits of the whole European continent.
That globalization is a serious problem within the West is demonstrated
by new nationalisms making themselves felt everywhere: Out of fear
of losing their identity many more people now than 50 years ago
cling to their traditions, vernacular, and "otherness":
in Wales, Britanny, Corsica, the Basque country, among the Flemish
and Irish, and particular among Balkan peoples - as lately in Macedonia
- an formerly Soviet countries like Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia,
Estland, Latvia, and Lithuania.
It is equally symptomatic that nowadays strong protest movements can
be launched against meetings of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, whether in Seattle, Prague or Genova: These organisations
and the world capitalism they represent also symbolize the road
to globalization. In the 19th century, workers took to smashing machines; in the 21st century, students riot over globalization.
4)
Finally,
globalization is not a one - way street, even today.
(a)
All of the trend-setters in the sciences and philosophy during
the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries were Europeans, not Americans: Immanuel Kant, Georg Friedrich
Hegel, Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin,
Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber,
Gottlob Frege, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Even the modern computer is based on the dual (digital) system invented
by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the 17th century and Konrad Zuse in Berlin (1941).
Even today, Palestinian professors and Indian computer wizards are
recruited from the United States.
(b)
The dominating music of the 20th century, jazz and its derivatives, like reggae
and calypso, are basically African and Latin American imports into
the United States. Also exotic foods fashions in the West like Turkish
doner kebap and Maghrebinian couscous can be seen as cultural
universalization in reverse.
(c)
The most impressive example of globalization from East to
West and from South to North is, however, Islam. Conceptually, Islam
was a universal religion from the very beginning, not addressed
to a specific tribe or religious community but to all of humanity:
O mankind! There has come to you an admonition from your Lord and a cure for all
that is in your hearts, and for those who believe, a guidance and
a mercy (10: 57).
While
Moses (s.) was sent to the Banu Israel and Jesus (s.) as well, as
a reformer of Judaism, Muhammad (s.) followed his universal Qur'anic
mission:
We have not sent you but to all of mankind , giving
them glad tidings, and warning them... (34, 28), and
We have not sent -you but as a mercy for all creatures. (21:107).
This
explains the Prophet's letter campaign in 628, addressed to the
most important rulers of his time.6 The Prophet of Islam obviously thought "global"
even before the conquest of Makkah.
But
only now, towards the end of the 20th century, in the middle of
globalization, Islam became universal in real terms. 50 years ago,
Muslim presence in America and Western Europe was negligible. 50
years later, the Muslim minorities in the United States (7 million),
France (4 mio.), Germany and Britain (both 3 mio.) are so sizable
that Islam in daily life has become a visible factor.
In
Germany alone, one now finds 66 mosques with minarets, built as
mosques, in addition to some 2500 masajid arranged in premises
adopted for the purpose. Two British Lords and one Baroness are
Muslim; on French TV, every Sunday morning an Islamic program is
broadcast. Muslim schools are spreading. In Austria one now finds
an Islamic Teachers College, not to speak of the prestigious mosques
in Paris, London, Rome, Zagreb, and Vienna. When ISESCO held its
first conference outside the Muslim world, in July 2000 in Berlin,
it was opened by the speaker of the German parliament.
II. Summing
up, we can be more specific about globalization, defining it as
the historically well known, basically neutral phenomenon of cultural
cross-fertilization at a global scale, leading from time to time
to the preponderance of a specific culture, without, however, ever
being uni-directional.
B.
And
yet, the Muslims are right in being scared, because the current
wave of globalization is particular in several respects.
1) Its
most obvious feature is the dizzying speed of today's globalization.
Thanks to modern means of transportation and communication, contemporary
changes take place almost instantaneously around the globe. This
is certainly true for the financial market and its movement of funds,
as recently experienced, e.g., by Malaysia. But also clothing fashions
and other fads like plateau-shoes conquer the globe in little to
no time.
2)
The second
feature of contemporary globalization is its totality. Formerly,
Europe would borrow from the Islamic world selectively. The
books translated in Toledo from Arabic into Latin concerned philosophy
and the natural sciences - mathematics, astrology, optics, chemistry,
medicine - but not religion. The Qur'an was not widely spread in
the West until printed in 1543. As during the Crusades, both sides
profited from the other's proficiency in armor, castle building,
surgery, hygiene, savoir vivre, and similar aspects of civilization
but not from the other side's religion.
In that field, attempts at mutual penetration - as by St Francis of
Assisi when preaching before Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil in 1219 and
by Raimundus Lullus (1232-1316) when preaching in North Africa -
were extremely rare. Both Sultan Salah ad-Din Ayubi and the German
Emperor Frederic II were absolutely exceptional in knowing each
other's religions well.
It is a mistake to believe that today's globalization was mainly technological
and economic: It is total because it also transports Western Weltanschauung:
the positivistic Occidental philosophy of life, its materialist
paradigm and secular ideology. That indeed is new.
By buying Western technology one can hardly escape unwittingly to absorb
the basic presumptions on which it was developed, i.e. the materialist,
positivist, secularist world view that invaded the Western scientific
establishment during the 19th century.
3)
To put this point into profile: Today's globalization happens
in a situation in which material progress is in the hands of a de
facto atheistic civilisation. As a consequence, atheism is being
exported as well. Formerly, whenever there was cultural interpenetration
and cross fertilization, both sides giver and receiver - were much
more similar to each other.
When the Romans accepted Greek mythology and Greek gods, they had already
been polytheistic, even though in a more abstract sense. When Christianity
spread, it did not confront atheism but neo-Platonic mysticism (Plotinus),
religious mystery cults, and the superb ethical system of Stoicism.
It was a new religion, yes, but entering a religious environment.
When Averroism swept into 13th century Paris, it met with a similar system
of religious philosophy, Scholasticism. Ibn Rushd and Thomas Aquinas
would have enjoyed religious discussions with each other.
Today, the situation is radically different because the developed world
and the developing world belong to two different realms as far as
religion is concerned: The developing world has remained religious,
be it Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, or Muslim, while the developed
world has largely become irreligious.
This then is the predicament the Muslims are facing.. The current wave
of globalization is extremely swift, total, and irreligious.
C.
While
globalization is a universal process, affecting all countries, it
does impact even more severely on Developing Countries, Muslim or
not.
1)
The AIDS crises, for instance, is a natural product of the
sexual revolution taking place about 40 years ago. However, it could
only develop into catastrophic proportions in sub-Saharan Africa
as a result of the economic conditions prevailing there.7
2)
Globalization has re-enforced the growing split between rich
and poor countries. Currently 1.3 billion people have to survive
on less than 1 US dollar a day. The richest 20% of the world's population
controls some 85% of global income and assets. As Wendy Tyndale
has pointed out Norwegians spent twice as much on their pet cats
than most sub-Saharan people earn for their up-keep.8
3)
Globalization
seems to recreate colonization, not militarily or politically but
culturally. As during the era of Colonization Western values and
gadgets are transported in a way which threatens to bring about
a uniform Occidental way of life. Typical for this state of neo-colonization
is the virtually universal use of
·
the English
language (with American pronounciation)
·
the Gregorian
calendar (instead of the hijri one)
·
American-type
fast-food restaurants.
Part
of this cultural control is the universal control of memories. Typically,
after the attack against the World Trade Center towers in New York
on 11 September, 2001, Zionist dominated American media managed
to forestall any discussion of the deeper causes of the event. In
contrast to Europeans, the American people were effectively kept
from pondering whether the catastrophy might be connected to the
occupation, injustice, structural violence, and humiliation inflicted
daily on the Palestinian people.
In
fact, he attack on the Pentagon was compared - not with the worst
terrorist attack ever - the American nuclear devastation of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki but with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
in 1941. Americans were immediately lead to claim the moral high
ground as it there had never been American atomic warfare, a holocaust
against their Red Indian native population, nor wide-spread slave
trading as late as the 19th century.9
4)
The Developing Word also seems to suffer disproportionate
of the brain drain which is so typical within universalization.
Even though I went to Union College in up-State New York and obtained
a degree from Harvard Law School, its was no particular sacrifice
for me to return, as promised, to my home country, Germany. Had
I come instead from Kenya or Mauritania, my reaction probably would
have been different: I would have clung to America.
5) Perhaps
the worst impact on Developing Countries of globalization is encased
by international media. Poor people are daily confronted with images
of a life in security, freedom, and affluence, if not luxury. Of
course, they aspire to the same standard of life. But since this
is out of reach such people start living beyond their means or simply
fake Western standards.
This explains, for instance, the enormous constitutional, political
and economic crises which hit Turkey in 2001. And it explains why
most brand-name products from Marocco to Turkey are cheap forgeries.
You sport a Gucchi shirt which wont survive its first washing and
a Channel belt whose buckle immediately starts roosting.
D.
At
Harvard Law School we learned that formulating an issue is half
its solution. Indeed, only when understanding globalization well
can we hope to take the right counter-measures.
1)
There is nothing we can do against the speed of globalization.
Computers will become ever more powerful. The INTERNET will enter
every house, sooner or later. Governments trying to interfere by
forbidding antennas or installing filters will fail miserably. Globality
is here to stay. But nothing prevents people in developing countries
from using the technical means of globalization for their own purposes.
In fact, that is what many Muslims already do. Islam is on the INTERNET,
Muslims enter chat rooms, use their home-pages pro-actively and
publish Islamic news and knowledge.10
Nowadays, from the INTERNET one can download several versions of Qur'an
translations and programs helping one to learn Qur'anic Arabic.
APPLE formatted programs carry titles like MacHadith" and "MacQuran".
Most astonishing perhaps is the activity of the Saudi-lead Harf
Information Technology Company based in Cairo.11 They are gradually
making available on computer diskettes much of the Arabic scientific
and cultural heritage.12
2)
It is harder (yet not unpromising) to cope with the totality
of the impact of globalization. Its impact will remain overwhelming
as long as people do not learn to use available technology selectively.
If they abandon their children to TV and the INTERNET, the new generation
will probably stop reading books and develop autistic features.
Sitting in front of a screen, going on-line and playing games of
violence will become an addiction bordering on shirk. Also, their
family values and attitudes towards life in general, including sex
and religion, will be strongly influenced in a negative way.
However, trying to separate kids from those gadgets physically
would be ineffective and even counterproductive. This traditional
way of protecting children - like hiding away daughters and arresting
drug dealers - is no longer fail-safe. Rather, parents must resort
to making their kids immune psychologically against the dangers
they will inevitably face,
Thus, instead of forbidding to watch risk-prone programs Muslim parents
should see them together with their children and discuss
their content from an Islamic standpoint. Instead of trying to keep
their sons and daughters out of the reach of drug dealers by sending
them to expensive, supposedly drug-free elite schools, we should
rehearse with them how to react and argue when confronted with drugs,
especially how to resist peer pressure in such a case. The strategy
must be: Not to prevent danger but to teach how to cope with it.
In other words, rejection of Western technology as a devilish invention
leads nowhere. It is all-pervasive. So people have to learn how
to live with it as Buddhists, as Hindus, as Muslims. Third World
people will be overpowered by Western technology only they fail
to learn how to master it.
3)
This leads to the hardest task: To confront the irreligious
presumptions of Western technology.
a)
In this respect, we should avoid excessive pessimism. Religion
has not disappeared in the West, although two things have happened:
On the one hand, religion has gone private (where it is easy
to overlook); on the other hand, religion has migrated from
the established churches into sects and youth cults.13
Ever since human rationality had been overrated by the Enlightenment,
Europe had seen counter-movements challenging the power of human
reasoning. In that sense the Romantic movement of the 19th century (just
think of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher) was
religious. For similar reasons, in opposition to the excesses of
modernist rationalism, post-modernity while being non-committal
is also relatively open to religion.
While sociologists and psychologists in the 19th century expected religion gradually to disappear altogether, the science
of religions obviously did not loose its study object. On the contrary,
the trend towards agnosticism and atheism within the natural sciences
has not only been stopped but reversed.
Today's physicists, biologist, and chemists are much less arrogant than
their predecessors since they now realize that they are as far away
as ever from understanding enigmas like the beginning of the universe,
matter, gravity, life, and consciousness. Several Nobel-price winning
natural scientists of the 20th century reverted to the belief in God, including
Einstein, Planck, and John C. Eccles. 14 Exemplary is Fritjof Capra's
approach of trying to marry Occidental physics and Eastern wisdom,
supported in this venture by Werner Heisenberg.15
It will take some time, as usual, for these insights to trickle down
to the rank and file. At any rate, it is clear that Western civilization
continues to profit from the Christian and humanitarian value system
from which it once rose.
b)
Nevertheless, standing up for religion in our day and age
will continue to be an uphill battle in main-stream Occidental societies.
This is so because the de-Christianization begun in the 17th century did not
stop at a vague "unitarian" Deism a la King Frederic the
Great of Prussia or "natural religion" a la Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe or a well balanced agnosticism. Rather it moved on to
a resounding materialism both in theory and practice.
In such a situation, before dreaming of an Islamization of Knowledge
in the West, Muslims have to work for the re-admittance of religion
as such into science and the public sphere. In other words: Before
they can hope that people will accept the second part of the shahada
(ashhadu anna Mohammedan rasulu'llah) they have to
see to it that people re-accept its first part, belief in a personal,
single God (ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah) - a Deity Who
is not just somewhere out there but means business here and there.
The situation in the developing world is quite different. True, materialism
has made in-roads into the traditional ways of life, but materialistic
thought is still being resisted. While it is rare to find a Western
intellectual admitting to be a believer, it is equally rare to find
an Eastern intellectual claiming to be atheist.
c)
Muslim tactics to be pursued in the West and in the East
must therefore differentiate as well. In fact, the local Muslims
in each individual country must tailor their da' wa efforts
to the locally prevailing mental climate. This means that effective
da' wa cannot be centralized.
In the West, Muslims will make headway only if they are seen to be competent
in the sciences and intellectual (and peaceful) in approach. With
intellectual giants like al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, ar-Razi, Ibn Rushd,
al-Biruni, al Khwarizmi, Ibn at-Haytham and 1bn Khaidun the Muslim
world had held the intellectual leadership of mankind for over half
a millenium. What is now considered Islamic orthodoxy - personalities
like Ibn Shafi' i, Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Hazm - were
wide-awake intellectuals as well. Only if we produce Muslim scientists
and thinkers of such caliber once more, with global Muslim and scientific
credentials, will Islam be taken seriously again in the West.
In the developing world, the issue is different. Here Islam never lost
its prestige as an intellectual light, but the Muslims did. The
problem there is that the ummah , as in India and Malaysia,
is considered to be less educated than other religious communities.
Also, the Muslims are not seen to practice what they preach both
in State and economy. Indeed, they cannot even agree on a model
for either.16 But surely, as
long as Muslims hesitate when asked about their position on democracy,
human rights and women's rights they will be excluded as serious
discussion partners and from cooperation.
These failures have consequences for the Muslim world itself, the 3rd world as a whole, and the Occident as well. This is so because Muslims
in the West and elsewhere are held hostages of any negative event
anywhere in the Muslim world. It is therefore essential that Muslims
all around the globe familiarize themselves with what scholars like
Muhammad Asad and Fathi Osman have had to say on democracy,17 Rashid al-Ghannouchi
on human rights,18 and Hasan at-Turabi
on women's rights19.
E.
1)
In the end, the battle for the hearts and minds of humanity
in the age of globalization is not about ideas as much as it is
about values. If Christianity looses out in the West it is
not so much because of the dogmatic incomprehensibility of notions
like original sin, atonement on the cross, divinity of Jesus, trinity
or infallibility of the Pope. To a larger degree, the demise of
the Churches (and the West as a whole) is due to their loss of face
as a moral bastion, indicative of their loss of faith.
Some Western observers are as well acutely aware of the current moral
crisis of the Occident.20 Since most Churches have caved in, even as
far as homosexuality and abortion is concerned, globalism goes hand
in hand with a moral vacuum.
2)
There lie the chances of an Islamic revivalism, inside and
outside the Muslim world: The Muslims must realize that Islam is
the one and only medicament available for the entire world if it
wants to survive as a civilization. in a pro-active mood, they must
mobilize the values present in their Islamic traditions.
These values, grown out of Qur'an and Sunnah, include the following:
a)
Family
cohesion, i.e. mutual solidarity and respect of the elders;
b)
Hospitality;
c)
Cordiality,
i.e. warmth in human relations;
d)
Respect
of others' convictions;
e)
Soberness,
i.e. rejection of structural addiction;
f)
Relaxation,
i.e. stressfree modes of life;
g)
Harmony
with time (instead of considering time as money);
h)
Leanness,
i.e. rejection of gluttony in any form;
i)
Women's
dignity;
j)
Discretion;
k)
Racial
tolerance;
l)
Pluralism, also in religious terms;
m)
Equalitarianism;
n)
Contemplation,
i.e. regular prayer;
o)
God
consciousness.
This
compact description of the Muslim way of life as seen from the outside
is in shorthand, of course; one could spend pages on each of the
values mentioned. For a discussion of globalization it suffices
to demonstrate that the Muslims can show an attractive practical
alternative to the practical problems of today's world -
from child abuse and juvenile delinquency to family breakup, drug
addiction, and the pornographization of sex-ridden societies.
3)
If the battle is won at this practical level, people attracted
to Islam as a civilization will discover Islam as a religion as
well. At that moment, they will become ready to pronounce the shahada
in its entirety. From that moment on, it may be the West that becomes
instrumental in the globalization of Islam both West and East.
But before engaging in even more futurology, let us end reminding each
other: Wa Allahu 'alam! God knows best.
Dr.