CIAO DATE: 11/2008
December 2004
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Professor Yassine Essid lives and teaches medieval history in Tunisia. He is also head of an interdisciplinary research group, the Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur la Méditerrannée (GERIM). GERIM is a participant group in the MCRI Project on Globalization and Autonomy and Professor Essid is a co-investigator in this project as a result of his leadership of GERIM. After attending the third annual meeting of the Globalization and Autonomy project, he gave a public lecture at McMaster University on Globalization and Islamisation. This Working Paper is an edited and revised version of that lecture.
Within the MCRI, Professor Essid is doing research on the relationship between globalization and Islamisation, particularly as it occurs in the Middle East and North Africa. In this paper, he traces the gradual growth of religious fundamentalism in the Arab world, taking particular note of the changes it is fostering in his own country of Tunisia. He notes that the fundamentalists have made effective use of the information and communication technologies, often seen to be a crucial infrastructure for contemporary globalization. He does not blame globalization, however, for the rise of fundamentalism. Rather he sees its roots in the growing economic and social misery of wide sections of the population in Arab Muslim countries. He also notes that the repressive actions of political leaders in most of these states lead to the disappearance of civil society organizations, leaving the field open for the one group that is organized, the Islamists or fundamentalists. Where globalization comes in is in permitting the movement to become more easily transnational, with important links between fundamentalists in OECD countries and those in developing countries. At the end of the paper, he also wonders whether the better integration of Arab Muslim countries into the global economy might provide a counterweight to fundamentalism.
Resource link: Globalization and Islamisation [PDF] - 101K