Globalization And Westernization In Islam

The disagreement over Westernization has had significant cultural and historical consequences for the entire Middle East region over the past few decades. Western culture being based on the rationalism, liberalism, human rights, secularism, etc. has little resonance within the Islamic civilization and often even contradicts it. Globalization is thereby raising people’s concerns about the massive influx of the Western values in Islamic countries. In fact, in Huntington and other Western analysts and politicians’ perspective, the conflict between Western civilization and political Islam is not only real, but also fundamental (Azghandi, 2009, p. 29).
This clash may be seen from the two angles: firstly, how the West dominates and portrays Muslims as uncivilized, barbaric people, but at the same time how the Muslims themselves do not want any changes that (they believe) have something to do with the Western culture.
Orientalism.
The West has produced a discourse representing the world as dichotomy of the ‘West’ versus the ‘Rest’. Some discursive strategies resulted in the stereotyping process …show more content…
According to the Orientalist construction of Islam, Muslims are presented as generally backward and irrational by using a combination of adjectives (good/bad, us/them, attractive/disgusting, civilized/uncivilized). The social structures, traditions, and a way of life of the Orient were subject to wrong interpretations (as underdeveloped or absent), although they were and are highly elaborated and function quite well. The reason was that they were not European and just different. The essence of Orientalism is thus the ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority (Said, 1985: