ISLAMIC CULTURAL NATIONALISM

The protection of regional languages as a way of resisting globalization is just one part of a
larger movement that interests geographers and other scholars. The movement, known as cultural
nationalism, is an effort to protect regional and national cultures from the homogenizing impact of
globalization, especially from the penetrating influence of U.S. culture. Figures 5.24 and 5.25
provide a picture of two widespread aspects of U.S. culture—films and television. Many other U.S.
products also travel widely outside of U.S. borders (Figure 5.26). While many products of U.S.
culture are welcomed abroad, many others are not. France, for example, has been fighting for years
against the "Americanization" of its language.

Nations can respond to the homogenizing forces of globalization and the spread of U.S. culture in
any number of ways. Some groups attempt to seal themselves off from undesirable influences. Other
groups attempt to legislate the flow of foreign ideas and values, as in some Muslim countries.

After Christianity, Islam possesses the next largest number of adherents worldwide—about 1 billion.
The map in Figure 5.27 shows the relative distribution of Muslims throughout Europe, Africa, and
Asia; Figure 5.28 shows the heartland of Islamic religious practice,

The Islamic world includes very different societies and regions, from Southeast Asia to Africa.
Muslims comprise over 85 percent of the populations of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Tunisia, Turkey, and most of the
newly independent republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus (including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan). In Albania, Chad, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, Muslims make up 50 to 85
percent of the population. In India, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, China, Greece, Slovenia, Thailand,
and the Philippines, significant Muslim minorities exist.

Islam is an Arabic term that means "submission”, specifically submission to God's will. A Muslim is
a member of the community of believers whose duty is obedience and submission to the will of God.
As a revealed religion, Islam recognizes the prophets of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible,
but Muhammad is considered the last prophet and God's messenger on Earth. The Qur'an, the principal
holy book of the Muslims, is considered the word of God as revealed to Muhammad by the Angel
Gabriel beginning in about A.D. 610. There are two fundamental sources of Islamic doctrine and
practice: the Qur'an and the Sunna. Muslims regard the Qur'an as directly spoken by God to
Muhammad. The Sunna is not a written document, but a set of practical guidelines to behavior. It is
effectively the body of traditions that are derived from the words and actions of the prophet
Muhammad.


White Islam holds that God has four fundamental functions—creation, sustenance, guidance, and
Judgment—the purpose of people is to serve God by worshiping him alone and adhering to an ethical
social order. The actions of the individual, moreover, should be to the ultimate benefit of
humanity, not the immediate pleasures or ambitions of the self. There are five primary obligations,
known as the five pillars of Islam, that a Muslim must fulfill: repeating the profession of the
faith ("There is no god but God; Muhammad is the messenger of God"); praying five times a clay
facing Mecca; giving alms or charitable donations; fasting from sunup until sundown during the holy
month of Ramadan; and making at least one pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca if financially and
physically able.

The emergence and spread of Islam are linked to the commercial history of the Middle East and North
Africa. The geographical origin of Islam is Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia. When Islam first
emerged, Mecca, where Muhammad was born in AD, 570, was an important node in the trade routes that
at first connected Yemen and Syria and eventually linked the region to Europe and all of Asia.
Today Mecca is the most important sacred city in the Islamic world, as well as an important
commercial center. Eventually Medina also became an important sacred city because it was the place
to which Muhammad fled when he was driven out of Mecca by angry merchants who felt his religious
beliefs threatened their commercial practices.

Disagreement over the line of succession from the prophet Muhammad occurred shortly after his death
632 and resulted in [he split of Islam into two main sects: the Sunni and the Shi'i. The Sunni
faction argued that the clergy should succeed Muhammad, while the Shi'i argued that Muhammad's
cousin Ali should succeed his father. Ali was killed, and the Sunnis became dominant. They remain
the mainstream branch of Islam, but the pattern varies from one country to another. The majority of
Iran's 60 million people follow Shi'i, the official state religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
founded in 1979. The majority of Iraq's population is also Shi'i. Li is also important to keep in
mind that Islam is practiced differently in many different locales throughout the Middle East and
North Africa and that Muslims who had migrated from the region—to Europe and the United States, for
instance—are shaped by, and shape the practice of, Islam in the Middle East.


Perhaps one of the most widespread cultural counterforces to globalization has been the rise of
Islamism more popularly, although incorrectly, known as Islamic fundamentalism. Whereas
fundamentalism is a general term that describes the desire to return to strict adherence to the
fundamentals of a religious system, Islamism is an anticolonial, anti-imperial, and generally
anticore political movement. In Muslim countries, Islamists resist core especially Western, forces
of globalization—namely modernization and secularization. Not all Muslims are Islamists, although
Islamism is the most militant movement within Islam today.

The basic intent of Islamism is to create a model of society that protects the purity and
centrality of Islamic concepts through the return to a universal Islamic state—a state that would
be religiously and politically unified. Islamists object to modernization because they believe the
corrupting influences of the core place the rights of the individual over the common good. They
view the popularity of Western ideas as a move away from religion to more secular (nonreligious)
society. Islamists desire to maintain religious precepts at the center of stare actions such as
introducing principles from the sacred law of Islam into state constitutions.

Another important aspect of the Islamist movement is the concept of jihad, which is a sacred
struggle. When this struggle is violently directed against the enemies of Islam, jihad is
understood to be a holy war. But jihad can also be a more peaceful struggle to establish Islam as a
universal religion through the conversion of nonbelievers. One example of jihad today is the
struggle of Shiite Muslims for social, political, and economic rights within Sunni-dominated
Islamic stares.

As popular media reports make clear, no other movement emanating from the periphery is as
widespread and has had more of an impact politically, militarily, economically, and culturally than
Islamism. Yet Islamism—radical and sometimes militant movement—should not be regarded as synonymous
with the practices of Islam, any more generally than Christian fundamentalism is with Christianity.
Islam is not a monolithic religion, and even though all adherents accept the basic pillars,
specific practices vary according to the different histories of countries, nations, and tribes.
Some expressions of Islam allow for the existence and integration of Western styles of dress, food,
music, and other aspects of culture, while others call for the complete elimination of Western
influences (Figure 5.29)