Islamism and Globalization

Abstract

Islamism appears one of the most important phenomena of our times and it greatly affects many global processes. In the Muslim world one can hardly find a country where Islamism would not be an influential and stable political factor. It seems impossible to comprehend modern Muslim (especially Arab) societies without taking into account the role of Islamism as simultaneously an ideology, a cultural environment, and a mode of life and guideline to follow. And if one keeps in mind the increasingly large share of the Muslim population in the world, it appears hardly possible to ignore their impact on the current and future globalization trends. All these make the correlation between globalization and Islamism an urgent issue which is, nevertheless, understudied. In the present article we would like to outline some patterns and landmarks of this mutual inter-action. Currently, Islamism is one of the most complicated social phenomena; it is a multifaceted, changing and heterogeneous movement within whose framework there unfolds an intensive ideological and political struggle. We hope the present article will help the reader to obtain some idea about this important phenomenon of the modern world whose development involves interests of billions of people of all countries, religions and views. At that, we emphasize that it is vital to distinguish between radical and moderate types of Islamism; the latter is promising with respect to becoming a positive and promising wing of political system in Muslim countries. We suppose that it is impossible to eliminate the threats posed by radical and terrorist Islamism only by force. One may hope to achieve this goal if they succeed to separate it from moderate Islamism while the latter should become more respectable, open and involved in common political environment.