Mode of Global Production and Islamic Culture Of Violence

Abstract

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 41, No.4, Summer 2018 Mode of Global Production and Islamic Culture Of Violence NedZad Basic* Introduction According to one group of scholars, the economic, political and cultural changes in the late 20th century did not have a major effect on the internal relations between the political and the cultural/religious structures in the Islamic world. Ernest Gellner emphasized that the process of secularization in industrialized society did not provoke much of a response in the Islamic community. Moreover, the influence of Islam on the feelings and beliefs of his followers increased.1 Another group of prominent scholars, however, came to the conclusion that the global changes in the late 20th century had a significant impact on the creation of ideas about the necessity to change the relationship between the political and the cultural/religious structures in the Islamic world. Famous Saudi Islamologist Abubaker A. Bagader, professor at King Abdul Aziz University, in his studies of the Islamic ideal in the historical context 66 *Nedzad Basic, former Fulbright scholar, is Professor of Public International Law and International Relations and European Studies. He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade (Yugoslavia), where he earned master's degree at the Department of International Public Law and International Relations. He earned his doctorate at University of Sarajevo. Post-doctoral specialization he completed at the University of St. Thomas University in Canada. He was elected as a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Law, Columbia University in New York, in 2000-2001 academic year. At the Law Faculty in Bihac he has established the teaching courses: Legal and Political System of the EU and International Relations and Security Studies. N. Basic is author and co-author of numerous scholarly papers published in international journals the most recent are: “Secularism and Islamic Law” (Handbook), ARCult Media (2016), Koln, Germany; Specification and Redefining Global Security Paradigm, International Studies, University for Diplomacy Dag Hammarskjöld, Zagreb (2016); International Law in the Shadow of Multi-ethnic Conflict, Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, 2016; He is also the author of several textbooks and monographs 1 Ernest Gellner, foreword to Akbar S. Ahmed and Hastings Donnan (1994), “Islam, Globalization and Post-modernity”. 67 of global structural changes, emphasized that the main problem in Islam is not the awareness that the Islamic community has to be changed. The main question is what kind of changes need to be made, and how fast and in what way they can be realized. And while some appeal to gradual and peaceful change involving the education and social activity of the masses and their active participation in political life, with respect and appreciation for the legal system and the state as a guarantor of peace and order, others are seeking faster and violent revolutionary change with the establishment of a new global revolutionary Islamic order.2 According to this view, the contemporary crisis of the territorial identity of the state has caused intensive cultural vibrations in Islamic countries, resulting in a dramatic confrontation between the state and society in the Islamic world. Global structural changes require a new space for fluctuations of capital, labor, information and the creative linking behind new knowledge and technology, which has brought about a major crisis in international relations, seeking a new global order in which the state no longer plays a central role in creating the interests and identity of social groups. Since historically the state in the Islamic world was more the agent of the interests of foreign capital rather than that of the interactions between the identity and interests in the Islamic community, this will lead to a serious identity crisis of the state in the Islamic world. As the individual and group identity in Islam is primarily associated with the identity of the global Islamic community of believers (umma), and not with the territorial-political identity of the Islamic state (Watan), whose borders were decreed by the former colonial powers, the “crisis of the territorial identity of the state” in the Islamic world will be automatically transferred into an internal conflict between the state and society in Islam.3 The remarkable complexity of this conflict...