The Modernization of Islam and the Creation of a Multipolar World Order

Modernization of Islam is a provocative analysis of the present global Islamic militancy, based on the author’s 1995 article published in Global Times (Copenhagen, Denmark). The 2001 attack on the US and subsequent Western-led attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq have led political scientists to believe in Samuel Huntington’s theory of a “clash of civilizations.” The world’s civilizations—Western, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, Orthodox/Russian, Hindu, African, and Latin—will, according to this theory, align and engage in war on a civilizational basis. Although experts predict that Islamic militancy will last three to four decades, they are unable to predict its final outcome. Until 1900 no one was predicting that democracy would replace kingdoms in most European countries, or that Asian and African countries would gain independence within five to six decades. But, because of World Wars I and II, most European kingdoms were replaced by vibrant democracies, and colonial rulers had to leave most of Asia and Africa due to the destruction wrought on their economies during these wars. In order to give birth to a beautiful child, a woman has to go through the pains of labor. Europe had some of its labor pains in the last century, when World Wars I and II were necessary to change the global socio-economic and political environments of those times. Had those wars not occurred, much of Europe might still be ruled by monarchs, and most Asian and African countries might still be awaiting independence from their colonial masters. Islam is the only major religion imposed by government fiat anywhere in the world. Today Islamic civilization is going through what Europe went through between World Wars I and II. At the end of this crisis, the majority of Islamic nations will become secular and democratic, like Turkey: the world seat of the Islamic Caliphate since 1517, Turkey shed its fundamentalist rule in 1923 and has remained free ever since.