ABSTRACT
As noted in chapter 1, the issue of identity cannot be separated from that of culture in relation to debates about globalization. In the Islamic greater Middle East, Islam is both a religion and a way of life, and this is daily reinforced and made routine by the education systems and the large army of religious advocates. Islam is a religion with its own legal code, traditions that provide the basis for order in society, and rules of social engagement. Islam provides a strong identity and order for an individual’s life from birth to death.1 Tibi says that Islam is a distinct cultural system in which the collective lies at the heart of its worldview and not the individual.2 Indeed, ‘the very size and cohesion of an Islamic community’, Rubin notes, ‘builds a religious, and hence cultural, wall against many aspects of globalization’.3
