Islam and the West: The Possibility of a Nonkilling Future

Abstract

All of Islam, despite its complexity as a world religion, is being vilified and construed as militant today, particularly in the West. This raises the question, "Is a nonkilling relationship at all possible between Islam and the West?" The irony is that it is the homogenising spread of Western Civilization across the globe that is confronting all other cultures and thriving at their expense. This unrelenting hegemony is increasingly provoking angry and violent responses as more cultures become alienated and homogenised under what are the end results of rampant globalisation: consumerism and capitalism on a global scale. The forces of unrestrained free trade, deregulation and privatisation have created "The Market", a powerful entity whose laws seem to go too easily unquestioned by its corporate servants. Globalisation is creating, across the broad sweep of nations, an ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor not only in terms of wealth but also in terms of human rights (George, 2003; Stiglitz, 2002; Oxfam, 2004). In so many societies the spread of globalisation is consequently resulting in the social exclusion of the 'Other', those who are poor, marginalised or who do not conform. We seek to explain in this paper how this process of exclusion is taking place. As Galtung (2002: 51) says, 'we cannot globalise the marketplace 'ad infinitum' without also, sooner or later, globalising our souls ...'.In this respect,Islam is of great significance in the world today because it stands at the cutting edge of new thinking: Through its gathering resurgence, it is levelling a challenge at the moral integrity of globalisation. How is it doing this? While nonkilling principles can be found in all world religious faiths, Islamic Civilization actively embraces diversity and rejects discrimination based on race, ethnicity and colour.