Islamic Worldview and the
Challenges of Globalization
‘Globalization’ defined:
 a phenomenon involving the integration of economies, cultures,
governmental policies, and political movements around the world;
 The growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide
through the increasing volume of cross-border transactions in goods
and services of international capital flows, and also through the rapid
and widespread diffusion of technology;
 it consists of processes that lead to global interdependence and the
increasing rapidity of exchange across vast distances
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 it has acquired three different distinct meanings:
1) Information meaning of globalization: Forces
which are transforming the information pattern of
the world and creating the beginnings of what
has been called the information super highway.
Expanding access to data and mobilising the
computer and the internet into global service.
 The economic definition of globalization: Forces
which are transforming the global market and
creating new economic interdependencies across
vast distances.
 The
third
meaning
of
Globalization
is
comprehensive: All forces which are turning the
world into a global village, compressing distance,
homogenizing culture, accelerating mobility and
reducing the relevance of political borders. Under
this comprehensive definition, Globalization is the
2 gradual villagization of the world.
 As early as 1962 the Canadian visionary Marshall
McLuhan wrote that the electronic age was turning all
humanity into a “global tribe,” and the term global
village is attributed to him
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Positive Aspects of Globalization
 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has
helped to reduce poverty by creating
jobs and improving incomes.
 New communications and information
technology have helped disseminate
knowledge in many fields of study and
disciplines.
 Communication is cheaper and easier.
Costs of telephone calls as well as
travel have fallen.
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This makes it easier to understand one
another.
Communities
although
heterogeneous, can be more cooperative
now
that
are
more
means
of
understanding each other.
Globalization makes it possible for
humanity to have compassion for each
other when calamities – natural or manmade – affect others.
Issues such as human rights and public
accountability are brought to the fore.
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Negative Aspects of Globalization
 Environmental degradation due to unrestrained
logging activities of transnational corporations
whose sole aim is to multiply profits.
 Although poverty has been reduced to a certain
extent, new economic disparities have been
created. There are stark regional disparities in
poverty.
 Basic necessities in life are set aside in favor of
profits. Many countries in the South have been
occupied with facilitating foreign investment in
industries that are lucrative to foreign markets
and forsaking the most fundamental needs of the
6 people.
 Globalization aids the removal of national
controls over cross-border financial flows.
Dramatic outflows of capital from one country to
another have caused havoc in some currencies,
particularly in Southeast Asia.
 Advances
outflow of
the South
the North,
in technology aggravated by the
capital to low cost production sites in
has caused growing unemployment in
which is an affront to human dignity.
 Globalization has popularized the consumer
culture. Consumerism has given birth to
materialism where people are more interested in
what they have rather than the essential aspects
7 of humanity.
 Global
consumerism
is
now
forming
a
homogeneous global culture where indigenous
cultures of the South are being replaced by
Western cultures.
 The global entertainment industry is propagating
a superficial American pop culture, which titillates
the senses and impairs the spirit.
 Formal education systems are emphasizing
technical and managerial skills responding to
market demands and leaving aside traditional
academic subjects. This means that education is
nothing more than acquiring specific skills and
techniques and less emphasis on moral
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education.
 Although the IT boom has given rise to an
expanse of information there is a lot of
information that is useless and meaningless
causing people to be pre-occupied with trivia.
 Double standards are present in the human rights
aspect of the present world where they are used
as part of Western governments’ foreign policy
but only when it suits them.
 Globalization has internationalized crime of all
kinds.
 Like crime, disease is more rampant throughout
the world making the spread difficult to control.
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