ABSTRACT
Globalization has proved to be one of the hardest modern concepts to define unambiguously, let alone to encapsulate fully in a set of operating principles. Even finding a universally acceptable set of variables for its content has proved difficult, with different disciplines assigning their own values to it. To some, it is no more than a new way of evaluating the international march of capital, and as such is not novel at all. Others, though, view the phenomenon as a new, ‘post-modern’ development, associated only indirectly with the 500-year march of capitalism. Still others see globalization as a symbol of, and testimony to, the cultural victory of the West over the rest – the supremacy of ‘Western values and value systems’. In this regard, it has also come to depict the political domination of the West in the international arena, seen by foe and friend alike to be headed and managed by the USA. It was in the late twentieth century that the unexpectedly rapid and sustained American economic expansion,1 coupled with the demise of the Soviet bloc, came to symbolize, particularly in the Muslim world, the triumph of American cultural, political and economic power in the world.
