"DISCIPLINING AMBIGUITY" (via <~text text="Political Theory">

Islam and Globalization: Secularism, Religion, and Radicalism: Far from being incompatible with it, Islam will have its place in the globalizing world. Islamic revival is part of the world-wide religious resurgence that corrects the secularist bias of European modernity. Globalization is a driving force in this process. (Sean L. Yom, 4/2002, International Politics and Society )

Not until the monotheistic Protestant establishment emerged as an articulate political actor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America did secularism as a distinct worldview coalesce and enter into public discourse in Western countries. Even since then, the rumblings of religion are still manifest in various court cases, political parties, and social movements that attempt to merge state power with religious intent in almost all Western countries, not to mention the Third World. Secularism never fully completed its vision for a comprehensive ordering of political and social relations, and so the assumption that it a finished political project flies in the face of historical and sociological evidence.

Globalization actually engages Islam rather than denying its relevance. Within the new public spaces created by globalization, religious identities interact with modern ideas and technologies. For instance, the advent of the printing press, which arrived in the Islamic world centuries after it impacted Europe, tremendously changed the structure of Islamic education, the ways by which holy texts were read, and the conceptualization of the Muslim world. As globalization continues, new technologies have continued to change relations of authority and knowledge, "reconfiguring notions of self and society" while lending a certain consciousness to previously marginalized, subaltern voices within the religion. For instance, the telecommunications revolution and the Internet have generated new intellectual possibilities for Muslim scholars wishing to both reflect upon as well as criticize Islamic notions of the right and the good; ironically, it has also allowed lay scholars and ordinary citizens in Muslim states, from Egypt to Indonesia, to contest the intellectual productions of Muslim scholars and teachers and offer new, radical interpretations of Islam to a mass audience, which consequently has helped form the basis of the new Islamic movements. In these cases, transformations within Islam have only occurred by the constant imposition of modern values and capacities, products of secular thought and alleged opponents of religion, into the discourses of religion. Meanwhile, that Islam has grown more rapidly than any other major religion rests upon the strength of globalization; it would be difficult, for example, for the faith to spread if the free movements of peoples and ideas that globalization encourages did not exist. Ironically then, globalization, predicated and articulated through a secularist bias, strengthens Islam by furthering its range and extensive influence. This paradox constitutes simply one example of how the secular-religious divide actually breaks down into interdependence rather than xenophobic distance, and how similarly the globalization-Islam opposition collapses upon itself on further scrutiny.

Expressions of Islam function as "means of disciplining ambiguity, creating boundaries and constituting, producing and maintaining political identities." This also applies to expressions against Islam, especially for global chaos theorists and the intellectual borders they have drawn around globalization that necessarily exclude Islam. However, as this investigation demonstrated, global chaos views on Islam were inaccurate for their reliance upon simplified concepts and ideas that were hastily extracted from Islamic texts. Their blurring of the boundaries between Islam and radical fundamentalism hides the real distinctions that separate these two traditions. In turn, radical Islam finds itself as one small element of the Islamic revivalist trend, itself part of the global religious resurgence, which must be seen within the broader secular-religious divide. At every level of this conceptual chain, the relations with globalization constitute interdependence and mutual reinforcement rather than categorical denial and opposition.

Debates about Islam and its role within the world as it globalizes confront the question of secular modernity and how it interacts with religion and Islam in particular. Radical Islam, of course, conceptualizes itself in opposition to modernity. But most of the Islamic revivalists do not agree with them. The deeper critique here is that Islam, in all of its emergences and expressions, cannot merely be characterized as a "self-contained collective agent," one that seems to have a life of its own. It must be understood as a performative, discursive tradition, understood as an organized, socially significant historical narrative that interacts with globalization; it functions as one powerful voice among the choir of political and moral options. Islam does not operate as some nebulous, abstract variable; rather, actors that perform behaviors under its mantle reconstitute redirect, and reify it through adherence to their own peculiar geographic, strategic, political, and economic needs, ultimately contributing to their syncretic identities. Ultimately, Islam does have a place in globalization, as much as globalization has a place within Islam. Islam will not mindlessly contest globalization; it derives meaning from it, which some Muslims-such as the radical Islamists-might interpret as threatening, while others derive more peaceful visions. Regardless of this diversity, Islam will certainly not recede from globalization?s horizons. It is very much a part of its heritage and future, and therefore a crucial strand in the universe of possibilities that awaits the globalizing world.

This much we know, Islam is not going to overcome globalization. So the forces of globalization, and of violent interaction with the West, are going to shape the future of Islam. As they do so, it seems likely that Islamic faith can be a restraining force on the worst excesses of liberal democratic protestant capitalism (which is all globalization really is) and one would therefore predict a brighter future for the Muslim world than for the secularized West, which has no longer has a capacity to restrain those forces. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2003 9:45 PM