ISLAMIC CULTURAL NATIONALISM

a) Homework

1. Pre-reading: Underline or highlight the key information of each paragraph.
2. Check the correct pronunciation of some key words and all the geographical names
    in the text. You may find Howjsay online the fastest way.
    Note the position of the word stress, e.g. Caucasus (1^st), Tunisia (2^nd), Ethiopia (3^rd)
3. Prepare a few questions on (larger) details for your classmates. Write them in Task 4.

b) At school: work in groups

1. Sorting the countries and other geographical names according to their stress - 3 groups, each
group collecting the words with the stress on one particular syllable.
2. Writing main ideas of each paragraph (on board / poster) - 9 groups.
3. Writing an abstract - individual work.
4. Asking questions - quiz - 3-4 groups.


1)     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. 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.

2)     After Christianity, Islam possesses the next largest number of adherents worldwide—about
1 billion. 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.

3)      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.

4)  While 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 day
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.

5)    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.

6)      Disagreement over the line of succession from the prophet Muhammad occurred shortly after
his death 632 and resulted in the 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. It 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.

7)  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.

8)     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.

9)    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 states.

10)    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.


Task 1   Sort the countries and other geographical names according to their stress.

Stress on the 1st syllable     ▪ ▫  ▫
Caucasus, Afghanistan, …

Stress on the 2nd syllable:   ▫  ▪
Tunisia, …


Stress on the 3rd syllable: ▫  ▫ ▪
Ethiopia, …


Did you pronounce these correctly?
Islam  ▫  ▪ [isla:m], islamic ▫ ▪ ▫ ,  but islam also   ▪ ▫ [izla:m];

Sunna, Muslim, homogenize, secularize, secularization, adhere - adherent, synonymous
Task 2     Main Ideas

a) Agree on the main idea of the paragraph assigned to you.




b) Listen and check the main ideas of the other paragraphs.

1) Explanation of cultural nationalism and respond to globalization.

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)


Task 3    Writing an abstract

a) in active voice - the author = the subject

First of all the author explains what is meant by cultural nationalism. Then he gives two ways of
possible respond to globalization. (par. 1)

b) in passive voice

Countries are grouped according to the percentage of Muslim inhabitants. (par.2)
Basic terms (Islam, Muslim, The Qur´an and The Sunna) are explained. (par.3)
Four fundamental functions of Islam and five primary obligations of a Muslim are listed. (4)

Task: Go on to complete the abstract. The following verbs may help you:

described, emphasized, highlighted, stressed, focused on, demonstrated, shown, mentioned, declared,
suggested, questioned, doubted; proved, argued







Task 4     Quiz for 3-4 groups
Use your prepared questions to check the more detailed knowledge of the text.








Task 5    Enlarge your vocabulary. Note the meaning of the underlined words.



Source of the text: Knox,P. - Marston, S.: Human Geography : Places and regions in global context,
Pearson Prentice Hall 2007

All the tasks by Věra Hranáčová, 2013-2014