RELIGION AND GLOBALISATION: WHAT ARE THE INTERACTIONS AND OUTCOMES?

There are numerous definitions of globalisation. Many focus on the idea that globalisation is a continuing process by means of which the world is increasingly characterised by common activity, emphasising in particular how many highly important aspects of life—including politics, culture, eco-nomics, trade, wars and crime are becoming more and more interrelated.

This implies that globalisation is also a matter of a change in consciousness, with people from various spheres, including politics, religion, culture, busi-ness, sport, and many other activities, thinking and acting in the context of an increasingly ‘globalised’ world. One result is that ‘territoriality’—a term signifying a close connection or limitation with reference to a particu-lar geographic area or country—now has less significance than it once did.

Thus, globalisation suggests greatly increased interdependence, involving both states and non-states: what happens in one part of the world affects others. Overall, then, globalisation encompasses the idea that humankind is currently experiencing a ‘historically unique increase of scale to a global interdependency among people and nations’. It is characterised by (1) rapid integration of the world economy, (2) innovations and growth in interna-tional electronic communications, and (3) increasing ‘political and cultural awareness of the global interdependency of humanity’ (Warburg 2001: 1).

Globalisation has deep historical roots, beginning in the 1500s and encom-passing three interrelated political, economic and technological processes (Clark 1997). While it is appropriate to perceive globalisation as a continu-ous, historically based, multifaceted process, it is important to note that there have been periods when it has been especially speedy. For example, its pace increased from around 1870 until the start of World War I in 1914. This was partly because during those four decades, ‘all parts of the world began to feel the impact of the international economy, and for the first time in history it was possible to have instant long-distance communication (telegraph, radio) between people’ (Warburg 2001: 2). After World War II, the speed, density and international impact of globalisation expanded again—as it did once more after the Cold War came to an end in 1989 (Haynes 2007: 65–95).

According to Keohane, the overall impact of these processes of globalisation resulted in an end state that he calls ‘globalism’. For Keohane, globalism is ‘a state of the world involving networks of interdependence at multicontinental distances, linked through flows of capital and goods, information and ideas, people and force, as well as environmentally and biologically relevant sub-stances’ (Keohane 2002: 31). Thus, globalism refers to the reality of being

interconnected, while globalisation denotes the speed at which these connec-tions grow—or diminish. Overall, the concept of globalism ‘seeks to [. . .]

understand all the inter-connections of the modern world—and to highlight patterns that underlie (and explain) them’ (Nye 2002: 2). In short, globalisa-tion can usefully be thought of as a continuing, multidimensional process with historical roots, involving intensification of global interconnectedness between both states and non-state actors. It also suggests reduction of the significance of territorial boundaries and of state-directed political and eco-nomic structures and processes.

While globalisation names a process that is still unfolding, there has been no shortage of attempts to define it. Is it possible to understand the impact of globalisation as an objective process that simply involves mapping the relevant facts in order to assess key global trends in relation to social, politi-cal, and economic organisation? Because analysis of globalisation is almost always cast in wider normative and ideological contexts, with value judge-ments to the fore, many would answer ‘no’. Reflecting such concerns, two schools of thought are polarised in their interpretation of the impact of glo-balisation upon the politics and economies of countries. I shall refer to the first as the ‘positive globalisation’ (PG) view, and the second as the ‘negative globalisation’ (NG) approach.

In the PG view, the end of the Cold War clearly demonstrated the supe-riority of Western values and belief systems over its Communist rival. Now, it was believed, we would see not only the final achievement of capital-ism’s global expansion but also the universal extension of liberal democ-racy. The outcome would be a peaceful and prosperous new world order, a modern golden age. Globalisation would help advance the well-being of millions of people around the world, through the liberating impact of the spread of markets, democracy and enhanced human rights. To further these developments, international organisations and global institutions would be strengthened and better focussed in addressing pressing global problems. In addition, informal cross-border structures would develop further, involving interaction of local groups and grassroots organisations from all parts of the world.

The notion of ‘positive globalisation’ comes with a powerful cluster of liberal assumptions. Globalisation is said not only to be irresistible but also to be welcomed, with overwhelmingly beneficial consequences, including (1) more effective global and regional institutions; (2) greater economic effi-ciency, via the spread of markets; (3) better mechanisms for problem solv-ing; and (4) more political choice and openness as a result of the spread of democracy (Haynes 2005: 8–14).

Negative globalisation (NG) critics of the PG view point to what they see as two main problems in this interpretation: (1) in practice, as opposed to theory, the benefits of marketisation misrepresent the past, exaggerating state economic failures in, inter alia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region that has long had state-dominated economies; and (2) to remove,

or even drastically scale down, the state’s economic role is problematic—not least because it may remove social measures designed to protect the weak in society from market failures and the (over-)exercise of political power by autocratic leaders. In addition, in the NG view, economic liberalisation, an integral aspect of globalisation, has been hijacked by a market liberalism which puts the mechanisms of the market before the well-being of commu-nities. In short, the NG view sees globalisation as negatively affecting the well-being of millions of people around the world, including the countries of the MENA. The NG critique also rejects the consensual acceptance of market capitalism and argues that capitalist globalisation leads to a grossly unfair system, structured mainly to improve the position of already power-ful vested interests. Overall, the NG view is that it is erroneous to accept the claims of the PG school at face value: globalisation is a highly politicised process, based on specific conditions that create both winners and losers. In this context, democratisation per se is not the panacea that proponents of the PG approach claim it to be, as the structural conditions accompanying globalisation serve significantly to undermine the possibility that democracy per se can improve the lot of the disadvantaged (Haynes 2005: 141–143).

ORIENTALISM

While these two views of globalisation clearly see the world differently, both would agree that globalisation leads to an expansion of channels, pressures and agents via which various norms are diffused and interact. For example, many people regard globalisation after the Cold War as involving more interaction between previously geographically fragmented anti-Western Islamist movements. This perception has led some to conclude that we are witnessing a widespread, even worldwide, ‘resurgence of Islam’ (Zemni 2002: 158), involving Huntington’s (1996) notorious ‘clash of civilisations’.

This alleged resurgence of Islam is said to fuel growing anti-Islam sentiments in many European countries. Over the last few years, an unfinished debate has ensued, whose roots are in the recent historical period of Western politi-cal and economic domination of Islam, an intrinsic aspect of a more general, Western-led globalisation. This involved what are claimed to be core West-ern values and norms: pluralism, liberal democracy, relativism and radical individualism, coming into contact with different values allegedly held by many Muslims.

Various critics, notably Edward Said (1978, 1993) and Bryan Turner (1978, 1994), have challenged this notion—Said called it ‘Orientalism’—

on various (empirical, theoretical and methodological) grounds. He chal-lenged the self-proclaimed objectivity of Orientalist accounts of the Middle East—and of Muslims generally—by deconstructing the assumptions and dominant themes of that discourse. The concept of Orientalism captures the idea that Islam is an inherently atavistic body of religious and social

thought, fundamentally at odds with Western thought and culture. Said (1978: 2) defines Orientalism as a style of thought based upon an ontologi-cal and epistemologiontologi-cal distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) the ‘Occident’. For Said, while many Western politicians and aca-demics have sought to essentialise both Muslims and Islam into unchang-ing categories, these assumptions were problematically rooted in historical generalisations—with little or no empirical foundation. His critique was damning: Orientalist thinking, built on depictions of the region as inherently backwards and barbarous as a result of supposedly inescapable character-istics of Islam, served the political prerogatives of colonialism well, because such intellectual discourse allowed the legitimisation of discrimination and exploitation (Said 1993: 96). Said quotes Lord Cromer, the British governor of Egypt from 1882 to 1907. According to Cromer, the Oriental generally acts, speaks and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European. While the European employs close reasoning and is a natural logician, the Oriental is singularly deficient in the logical faculty (Said 1978: 39).

Cromer was not an isolated example, an aberration; rather, he was rep-resentative of a wider trend, carrying ideas that were dominant for long periods and show no signs of dying out a century later. As Heristchi (2006) notes, Orientalism monopolised the discourse on the Middle East, from his-tory, culture and politics, to artistic expression. Lord Cromer was, of course, a product of his times, but his prejudiced views are certainly not extinct at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. We can note the continued use of Orientalist ideas and thinking in relation to the problematic use of the term ‘Islam’, to imply a unifying conceptual category predicating social and political order, with related political biases. In this view, the Muslim world still is often seen as a monolithic, unchanging, underdeveloped, violent, anti-democratic space: a direct result of the perceived fundamental characteris-tics of Islam. Thus, one of today’s most contentious issues—the nature of the relationship between politics and Islam in Europe—may be a relatively new concern in Europe, but it has long been central to political development in several parts of the world, including the Middle East, North Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In these cases, Islam has long been a central focus of political science analysis, often with an Orientalist bias.

Samuel Huntington’s egregious clash of civilisations thesis is an example of what might be called nouveau Orientalism. Huntington first presented his argument in a 1993 article, followed by a book three years later. Hun-tington claimed that following the end of the Cold War, there was a new global clash underway, replacing four decades of secular conflict between liberal Democracy/Capitalism and Communism. Now there was a new clash between the (Christian) West and the (mostly Arab, mostly Muslim) East.

The core of Huntington’s argument was that after the Cold War, the Chris-tian, democratic West found itself in conflict with Islamic fundamentalism, a key threat to international stability. So-called Western values—strongly informed by Protestant and Catholic versions of Christianity—were said

by Huntington to be conducive to the spread of liberal democracy. For evi-dence of his claims, he noted the collapse of dictatorships in Christian coun-tries in Southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, Spain) and throughout Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by the development of liberal democratic political systems and norms (rule of law, free elections, political rights and civil liberties). For Huntington, such democratisation was con-clusive proof of the synergy between Christianity and liberal democracy, key foundations of a normatively desirable global order built on these (Western) liberal values. In addition, around the same time, the U.S. neoconservative Francis Fukuyama argued that Islam is inherently undemocratic or even antidemocratic, while Islamic fundamentalism has a more than superficial resemblance to European fascism (Fukuyama 1992: 236).

Nouveau Orientalism was not restricted to a few U.S. academics, however notable. It was also influential among some American and European politi-cians, collectively articulating the view that Islam is the undesirable Other.

For example, soon after 9/11, U.S. Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos asserted that ‘Unfortunately we have no option but to take on barbarism which is hell-bent on destroying civilization [. . .]. You don’t compromise with these people. This is not a bridge game. International terrorists have put themselves outside the bonds of protocols’ (Interview with Tom Lantos, BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 20 November 2001). Similar, albeit more restrained, comments were made by a former French president, Valéry Gis-card d’Estaing. Critics of such claims noted, however, that it is one thing to argue that some Muslims have qualitatively different perspectives on liberal democracy than some Christians, but that it is quite another to claim that all Muslims are engaged in serious conflict with the (Christian) West because of their differing political and social values. They pointed out that there are, in fact, many Islams, and only the malevolent or misinformed would associate all Muslims and their political articulations, whether in the United States, Europe or elsewhere, with an undifferentiated and simplistic idea of an anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism.

The idea of religious/cultural/civilisational conflict is also problematic for another reason: it is impossible to identify and articulate clear territorial boundaries between different civilisations/cultures/religions, and thus unfea-sible to perceive them as acting as coherent units. Huntington’s image of clashing civilisations focuses on an essentially undifferentiated category—a civilisation—and places insufficient emphasis on the various trends, compe-titions, conflicts and disagreements that take place within all such traditions, whether Islam, various Christianities (Protestantism, Catholicism, Ortho-doxy), Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, and so on. In short, it is not useful to view civilisations/cultures/religions as closed systems of essentialist values and analytically unhelpful to perceive the world as comprising a strictly limited number of civilisations/cultures/religions, each with their own unique core sets of beliefs which necessarily contrast with others.

Finally, Huntington’s image of clashing civilisations problematically ignores the fact that many radical Islamist groups—such as al-Qaeda or the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai bombings, Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba (‘Soldiers of the Pure’)—primarily target not the West per se but their own unrepresentative, corrupt and illegitimate—in short, un-Islamic—govern-ments. Arguably, anti-Westernism is a by-product of this focus, not its cen-tral dynamic. Most radical Islamist groups emerged in the 1980s and 1990s following serious domestic political and economic governmental failures, regimes that for the most part were supported by the U.S. government, the European Union and/or individual European governments. This latter fac-tor provides much of the context for the anti-Western tendencies of radical Islamist groups.

Overall, the arguments of Said and Huntington underline that there is a deep-rooted tradition in Western thought of seeing the Orient—that is, for our purposes, the Arab/Muslim world of the MENA—as distinct and distinctive compared to the Christian West. This is not, as already noted, a novel issue. During the centuries of Western imperialism, there were fre-quent debates about what rights non-Christian and non-European peoples should be allowed to enjoy. The specific conflicts between Christianity and Islam were moulded dualistically by notions both of holy war—suggesting a special kind of conflict undertaken effectively outside any framework of shared rules and norms—and just war, one carried out for the vindication of rights within a shared framework of values. The result was a strand of Western thought suggesting that, because of their nature, some forms of political power—such as states and/or ideologies—cannot realistically be dealt with in normal terms of engagement, that is, by accepted rules between civilised actors in international relations. Indeed, such international rules, norms and practices legitimately can be set aside when confronting and trying to deal with those perceived as non-civilised international entities.

And this is not something of historical interest only. We have already noted, following 9/11, that similar ideas were expressed (see the remarks of U.S.

Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos above). Earlier, during the 1980s, the Reagan administration in the United States averred that there was a basic lack of give-and-take available when dealing with Communist governments;

consequently, if necessary it was appropriate to set aside basic notions of international law when dealing with them.

GLOBALISATION: CHALLENGES AND