IS GLOBALIZATION McDONALDIZATION?
– Globalization and Islam (Chapter 6) Return to Unit List This unit takes a brief, introductory look at the debate over globalization in Islamic countries. Mark LeVine, the author of one of your on-line readings, notes that although “few Americans would imagine it, the Middle East is a particularly interesting place to examine the globalization debates, because here the issues have engaged Arab and Muslim scholars and ordinary people alike with particular intensity.” The following sites consider the question of globalization and its impacts on and implications for Islamic countries from several perspectives. But all of them consistently identify two key issues: first, Islamic countries have largely been marginal to the globalization process; that is, the benefits of globalization have for the most part passed much of the Islamic world by. Second, despite that marginality, globalization is having tremendous impacts on the Islamic world. Indeed, Muslim countries were experiencing these i
