Globalization in the MENA and Europe: Culture, economy and the public sphere in a transnational context

Abstract

This paper explores how globalization in the Middle East has been understood and responded to during the last two decades and how it relates to the continued, though sometimes troubled, implantation of Islam in Europe. I first explore the dynamics of the marginalized incorporation of the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region into the dominant networks of economic globalization, offering a critical appraisal of the existing literature on this subject. I then explore how my reading of this data correlates with how Muslim scholars and activists in the Middle East and Europe have experienced globalization and are writing about it. Guiding this analysis is a focus on culture as a primary vector of globalization at large and among Muslim communities and societies in particular. Through a process of ‘complex connectivity’ in which the myriad small everyday actions of millions of people are linked with fates of distant, unknown others and even with the possible fate of the planet, globalization has created new possibilities for either increased integration or ghettoization of Muslim communities within Europe and across the Muslim majority world.