The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

globalization

Globalization is the process of formation of multiple interdependent ties among various locales in the world, facilitated by the emerging common vision of one interconnected world. Historical literature notes earlier processes of globalization, but contemporary globalization is primarily centered on the continual opening of national economies and their mutual integration via free trade agreements and domestic reform policies.

The vision of “one world” is largely the inheritance from a European hegemony imposed on the world at the highest stage of colonial domination, achieved prior to World War I. A convergent dimension of the present-day globalization is therefore geopolitical, since the program of economic integration often reflects Western priorities of supporting pro-Western governments, resulting in the erosion of welfare regimes and, more generally, weakening the autonomy of the states and the sovereignty of their jurisdictions within industrial and developing countries.

Islamic politics has been deeply enmeshed in this global dynamic, both in the colonial and the postcolonial eras. Islamic movements and groups that oppose pro-Western governments within Muslim majority societies often hold these governments responsible for disregarding the needs of their populations, particularly those of the middle classes, and for neglecting the basic tenets of the “common good” (al-maṷlaḥa al-‘āmma in Islamic jurisprudential parlance). Another close affinity of Islamic politics to globalization rests on the fact that the premodern configuration of Islamic civilization reflects a form of globalization sui generis, occurring prior to the current wave of Western-centered globalization and building on extensive transnational connections. In Islamic history, notably in the epoch that Marshall Hodgson called the Middle Periods (between the 10th and the 15th centuries, roughly corresponding to the European Low Middle Ages), such ties encompassed traders and scholars, Sufis and pilgrims alike. Islamic civilization was located, geographically and socially, at the center of a medieval world system that did not require centralized governance, either nationally or transnationally based, but fostered long-distance exchange, connectedness, and solidarity while keeping fluid the distinction between insiders and outsiders. This type of transnational and civilizational solidarity and governance was further cultivated in early modern Muslim empires, like the Ottoman and Mughal (rather more than in the Safavid, with its sectarian Shi‘i identity). Contemporary sociopolitical movements with an Islamic orientation integrate subnational locales into transnational networks of solidarity and mobilization that can create new bonds or confirm old divides, as between Sunnis and Shi‘is. From this perspective, globalization relativizes the centrality of any rooting of human communities in territorially and corporately defined communities, like nation-states. It therefore resonates with a historic Islamic approach privileging ties between locales, groups, and cities more than stressing the autonomy of cities or the sovereignty of national and corporate communities. This affinity is strengthened by the erosion of the legitimacy and institutional ossification of postindependence states within Muslim majority societies.

This specifically Islamic articulation of a global vision is also nurtured by the evolving cultural and communicative dimensions of globalization. It is particularly well supported by the growth, since the late 1990s, of satellite channels and websites with an explicitly Islamic orientation (e.g., Iqraa and islamonline.net). Such new media are often linked to intellectual authorities, opinion leaders, and “directors of consciences” whose activities are qualified as global, like in the case of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and ‘Amr Khalid. Here the movement aspect of globalization meets and sometimes clashes with the fact that the investments necessary to support such global media enterprises, be they public or private, tie them closely to sectors of the establishment, be they financially strong states (like those of the Gulf) or corporate investors.

A hybrid, emerging character of Islamic globalism, trying to bring a common denominator to the movement aspect and the interests and support of the establishment, is the figure of the “new dā‘iya,” in other words, practitioner of da‘wa (the call to Islamic belief and practice). Often devoid of the scholarly credentials traditionally ascribed to the ‘ulama’, this character aggregates audiences and creates potential constituencies across national borders, often via a combined use of satellite television, websites, and even cooperation with international organizations. This is the case with ‘Amr Khalid, for instance, who, banned from Egypt in 2003, resettled in England and intensified his presence on a variety of Arab satellite channels while also working with the World Health Organization on an antismoking campaign, which he saw as part of his larger efforts to promote a moral conduct—oriented both to individual success and to the pursuit of the common good—among the Muslim youth in Muslim majority countries and in Western diasporas alike.

The latest manifestations of this type of Islamic globalism highlight the prevalence of common standards of globalization especially at the level of culture and communication. Yet this standardization is matched by a pluralization of the political signifiers legitimizing the various messages, which the international state system is no longer able to contain within conventional views of participation, citizenship, and rights. For example, while the human rights framework has gained ground in tandem with globalization, its articulation according to particular civilizational perspectives (like the campaign for “Islamic human rights”) has become widely accepted, if not fully legitimate. Islamic politics in this sense reflects the search for a balance between universal globalism and civilizational particularism. At a deeper level, easily traced in the message of emerging media leaders, the juridification of economic and political ties, which is part of the inheritance of the international state system, is often matched by a growing awareness of the centrality of lifestyles and modes of expression. These are influenced by global standards but rearticulate specific identities (e.g., Muslim hip-hop).

It is uncertain whether this emerging Islamic globalism (also dubbed “Islamic transnationalism” or even “cosmopolitanism,” terms that accentuate different aspects of the global connectedness) is more of a challenge to the international state system and in particular to the postcolonial states in the Muslim majority world itself than it is to the hegemonic forms of Western-centered globalization. Generally speaking, and in the long term, “integrationist” tendencies seem to prevail within Islamic movements and groups over “isolationist” temptations (a contrast exemplified by the urban puritan versus tribal articulation of the movements). Yet even within the integrationist approach, the idea of an integration of Muslim interests and lifestyles into the wider dynamics of the world system is subordinated to the possibility of preserving the autonomy of key Islamic notions of solidarity and good life vis-à-vis the process of global standardization linked to consumerist models. Therefore, voicing fears of globalization in an Islamic idiom is often the expression of a will to negotiate a fair insertion into the world system in ways that avoid a civilizational sellout. It also reflects a will to support the subinstitutional impetus of globalization processes without accepting rootlessness and homogenization.

Even if Islamic approaches to globalization do not easily fit into standardized forms of political and cultural expressions, they often work as a catalyst of their growing differentiation and complexity. They enhance the importance of voluntary interventions within more informal communicative forms and political spaces than those anchored within conventional—and increasingly weakened—state jurisdictions. Such spaces and practices appear to be strongly connected both to larger civilizational programs and to methodical approaches to personal conduct. A certain primacy of moral self-steering is one notable result of their convergence, with its increasing avoidance of institutional power rituals and strategies. A leader like Qaradawi has become since the 1980s the representative of such a convergence by generating a public attention whose intensity can be compared to the popularity of postcolonial leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, like the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.