Islamic Civilization in
Globalization:
From Islamic futures to a
Postwestern civilization
Sohail Inayatullah[1]
Abstract:
Islam can be seen
as a counter discourse to globalization, to the expansion of economic space and
the fulfillment of the dreams of the social darwinists. However, even as Islam
attempts to create new possibilities for globalism, national politics doom it
to a politics of reaction, of reducing diversity and innovation. This is
especially perilous as the next phase of globalisation promises to end
historical notions of reality, truth, nature and sovereignty. In this
dramatically changed world, Islam can join with other counter discourses to
create a moral vision of a planetary society, an alternative vision and reality
of globalization.
Countering
Globalization:
At one level, Islam can be seen as a
counter-globalisation[2]
in that globalisation – at least in its dominant face – is essentially about
expanding the economic circle in our lives at the expense of the social, the
spiritual and the cultural. It is the expansion of the world capitalist economy
into every sphere of our lives. It is
also the continuation of social darwinism, that the fittest – the most
entrepreneurial - should lead the world.
Finally, globalism continues the ideal of progress, of creating the
perfect society, the positivist/scientific world, of forever removing religion
and irrationality from human history.
The latest technology that promises to deliver this future is germ-line
engineering, creating a world of flawless human beings. But in whose image of
perfection will these individuals be created in? Certainly not Islamic notions
of the good, rather, they will continue in technocratic and western definitions
of health, beauty and intelligence.
In this move to hyper-globalization, the
Islamic world stands both as an imagined past – feudal, low-tech – but also as
a civilization based on an alternative distinction between the public and the
private, between individual space and collective space and between the secular
and the religious.
However, globalization - if we ask not what
is globalization but which globalization – along with the globalization of
economy and the globalization of technology (its acceleration) also consists
of: (1) the globalization of awareness of the human condition (of hope and
fear); (2) the globalization of
responses to market and state domination (the emergent global civil society of
transnational organizations); (3) the
globalization of governance (both below and above); (4) and, finally
globalization is both the expansion of time (creating a discourse of the long
term future) and its elimination
(creating the immediacy of space).
In this more exhaustive definition of
globalization, where stands Islam? Islam in these globalized worlds, defined
more eclectically, is first about an alternative to the Western project, that
is, a promise of a more spiritual society based on a the unity of thought, of
an alternative epistemology, an alternative notion of science and political
economy.
Islamic
Paradigm:
Generally this alternative
paradigm as articulated by various Muslim
writers consists of the following:[3]
There are ten such concepts, four standing alone and
three opposing pairs. Tawheed (unity), Khalifah (trusteeship), ibadah (worship),
ilm (knowledge), halal (praiseworthy) and haram (blameworthy), adl (social
justice) and zulm (tyranny) and istislah (public interest) and dhiya (waste).
Tawheed articulates the
larger Islamic unity of thought, action and value across humanity, persons,
nature and God. Khalifah asserts that it is God who has ownership of the Earth.
Humans function in a stewardship, trustee capacity, taking care of the Earth,
not damaging it. The goal of the Islamic worldview is adl, social justice, and
it is based on the larger needs of the people, istislah. To reach these goals, ibadah, worship or
contemplation is a beginning and necessary step. From deep reflection, inner
and outer observation, ilm or knowledge of self, other and nature will
result. One's action then are halal,
praiseworthy and not haram, blameworthy. Moreover with this framework, dhiya
(waste) of individual and collective potentials is avoided as is zulm, tyranny,
the power of a few, or one, over many, or the power of a narrow ideology over
the unity within plurality that the Islamic paradigm advocates. The science
that emerges from it is not reducationist objective but synthethic and values
based, focused on an emotional commitment to understanding Allah's world.
While the above presents an alternative
paradigm of Islam, it is the vision of an ummah, a global community of
believers and non-believers that defines this alternative globalism. At heart, Islam desires to reintegrate the
individual as part of the natural order. While Western civilization has come to
life in long drawn out battles against the tyranny of royality (from the Magna
Carta to the Glorious English Revolution) for muslims it has been the most recent battles againt
colonialism and imperialism that has unleashed a humanistic spirit. The vision of the ummah, writes jailed
muslim leader, Anwar Ibrahim, "must be able to transcend cultural
specificity [and] inhabit the realm of universal ideas."[4]
This means that the vision of the Ummah must
draw on the cultural resources from Islamic history using them to engage with
other civilizations through inclusive dialogue. However, the universal must be stated within evolutionary terms,
as part of the human unfolding drama.
But behind this idealism lies the current
reality of an Islam, that while dramatically increasing in numbers, is
decreasing in conceptual unity,[5]
decreasing in its viability to create a new politics and economics, indeed,
culture, that is, while muslims trust in Allah, they are not doing enough to
tie their camel – to become culturally and technologically innovative.
Writes muslim scholar, Munawar Anees: [6]
Perpetuation
of despotic rulers, such as Mahathir in Malaysia, is achieved through a systematic corruption of the
civil, judicial and the police
departments. The invertebrate state-controlled media serve the
self-fulfilling prophecy while
anti-Semitic slander with sham retractions is not uncommon for sleazy political
gains. Greedy multinationals and the Western corridors of power are clearly
reprehensible for propping up these client regimes as their economic and
political mercenaries.
Given
the intellectual bondage and political and economic subservience of the Muslim
world to the West, prospects for the future, either programmed or desired,
remain gloomy. There seems to be an inexplicable fatalism that continues to
envelope the Ummah - the global Muslim community. It has ceased moving from
opinion to knowledge. And employing knowledge for social evolution. In the
footsteps of the Prophetic Tradition - beside trust in the Divine mercy - are
not Muslims required to tie up their camel?
Can muslims, asks Zia
Sardar, recover the dynamic principle of ijtihad – sustained and reasoned
struggle for innovation and adjusting to change – that has been neglected and
forgotten for centuries? [7]
Can Islamic civilization avoid the future being programmed by globalization and
create an alternative modernity, that is, not destroy tradition but adopt it
critically, challenging feudalism and patriarchy and authoritarian knowledge
politics, and creating a world, modern, but different from the West?
The possibilities are mixed.
With the ascension of the West, muslims have internally adopted the Orientalist
codes, seeing themselves not through their own historical eyes – gaze – but
through the lenses of Western categories. What results then are imitations of
the West, instead of multiculturalism or anti-West rhetoric for local power
politics. The strength of globalization
in terms of shaping the world economy as well as world culture – the politics
of idea production, how Hollywood movies shape world notions of self – do not
bode well for other cultures (except in exoticized or museumized forms).[8]
Technology
transforming modernity:
But as we venture into the future,
globalization is not just about expanding economy and technology as well as
the dialectical responses of civil
society and reflexive awareness but also about dramatic changes in the nature
of reality (through virtualization) in truth (through challenges from
postmodernism and multiculturalism) in the nature of nature (from genetics
particularly germline engineering as well as from feminist/poststructural
thought) as well as sovereignty (making the self and the nation-state far more
porous than the legacies industrialism has given us). Within these frames can we still imagine not just a vital Islam
but any Islam? Or is Islam likely to be left behind by .com fever and the new
economy (virtualization), by genomics (the end of the natural), by the
relativization of newtonian stability and globalized economics (and
international organizations and corporations spearheading the end of ideology)?
Virtualization will challenge all religions
as it contests historical definitions of reality. Computer games are already a
larger revenue industry than films and the trends are that this will keep on
increasing. But there are significant problems ahead. First, virtualization
leads to social isolation, which leads to depression, which already in 1990
accounts for five of the ten leading causes of disability. Psychiatric conditions are expected to play
an even greater role in the global burden of disease in the future, becoming in
2020 the leading cause of the loss of life years. [9]
Virtualization is likely to further fragment the western self, creating the
desolation of postmodern anomie.[10]
The lack of access to the Net may prove not as disastrous as it appears now –
communication, and not merely solitary information transfer – will remain
important in the Islamic world. This
relates to the second problem. Virtualization further weakens social ties,
community (even as new net communities are created). Again, for the Islamic
world, with less net access, this may prove a boon. However, as the Islamic
world opens up to the net, we should expect individualization. The personal computer revolution may also
create spaces for software that reduces the interpretive authority of mulllahs.
For example, by placing the Quran on cdrom, direct access to interpretation
will be possible. This expansion of knowledge democracy could be one factor in
challenging the dominating feudal structures in the Islamic world. It could
also help create an alternative cyberculture, modern, but differently so from
the hegemonic West. This alternative
culture would be one that allows group experience of virtuality, thus creating
new realities, innovation without the loss of the family orientation of Islamic
culture.
For the Islamic world, the challenge will be
to – as with the adoption of all non-indigenous technologies – to appropriate
and use ICTS and their future developments (web-bots, the always-on, wearable
computers) without being used by them, that is, to use the net to unleash local
innovation without succumbing to the dark side of cyber futures.[11]
But a greater challenge than
virtuality will be the end of the natural through developments in genetics.
Cloning, gene therapy and germline engineering all contest evolutionary views
of what is natural – that is, humans preselecting genetic dispositions,
characteristics. The slippery slope from genetic prevention (reducing the
probability of developing certain diseases) to genetic enhancement (height,
“intelligence”) to new species creation will be quick and almost unstoppable
within current globalized and technocratic science. While this will challenge all religions, religions of the book,
derived from stories of Adam and Eve will be especially made problematic.
Buddhist and other Indian perspectives with far more liminal views of self,
will find negotiating an artificial world far easier. The works of Indian
philosopher P.R. Sarkar are especially instructive in developing a spiritual
perspective of new technologies.[12]
The muslim view of gene
therapy is generally best described by Munawar Anees and Abdulaziz Sachedina:
Anees writes:[13] gene therapy (not to mention cloning) transgresses
everything that Islam is about, about what is natural and what is wrong.
Adds Sachedina: [14]
In Islamic discussions in
eugenics, there is almost a consensus among Muslim scholars that it "having better rather than worse
genes" does not play a part in the recognition of the good qualities of
human beings; it is something that is designed by God, and therefore, it should
be left to God, so there is no incentive for the improvement of the genetic composition
of individuals to increase the value of that individual. Rather, the value
of the individual depends on faith. …
… There is no encouragement
of any kind to improve genetic composition through any kind of surgical or any
kind of medical or choices to the marriage decisions; rather, the will of God
is regarded as the one that really creates human beings the way there are, and
there are potential improvements within that if faith is maintained, if moral
and spiritual awareness are maintained within the life
These
new technologies pose the most dramatic problems for those who consider the
natural as fixed instead of as constantly changing and in the process of
recreation. Strict traditionalists (those who do not take a dynamic view of
knowledge, wherein ijtihad (reasoned judgement) gives way to taqlid (blind
imitation), in particular, will find the next twenty or thirty years the best
and worst times. The best because the forces of tradition will flock to them;
worst because the technological imperative and humanity's struggle to
constantly recreate itself and thus nature will not be easily forced back. For the Islamic world to survive, it will
not only need to debate these technological developments but articulate an
alternative science.
For
religions in general, there are three possibilities.[15] First is the return to an imagined past with
strong feudal and male structures, identity defined by in-group exclusive
bonding. Second is to adapt to the future by seeing the past as metaphor, as a
story to ethically guide oneself. The latter may become far too fluid for most
leaders, however, over time, a new layered religious framework may develop,
that is, integration at a different level. For individuals, too, a similar
choice remains: return to an integrated but exclusivist self or create a
liminal constantly changing self. This postmodern self, the salad bar theory of
pluralism, may lead to total fragmentation or alternatively may, as Sarkar
argues, create a layered, neo-humanistic self that moves beyond ego (my way is
the only way), family (concern for only my future generations), geo-sentiment
(my land, territory), socio-sentiment (my religion or race) as well as
humanistic sentiment (humans above all), that is, a dynamic, layered inclusive
self with incorporates other humans as well as plants and animals. A
neo-humanistic self thus moves through the traumas of ego, territorial
nationalism, exclusivist religion, racism as well as speciesism entering the
universalistic transcendental.
Sovereignty:
Combined with virtualization and
geneticization is breakdown of sovereignty. While the passport office remains
threatening, capital is now free to roam, as is pollution. Governance too has
moved to world levels with the institutionalization of world organizations around
activities of health, climate, economy, refugees, to name a few. However, while capital and state have
expanded, the peoples sector has challenged its domination. Non-governmental
organizations have been quick to pick up the slack when transnationals refuse
to observe triple bottom line accounting measures (profit plus social
responsibility plus environment). The
internet too has challenged national sovereignty with cyberlobbying quickly
becoming a new form of local/globalist politics, forcing states to be far more
transparent than they would like to be. Governments that have resisted this
have found themselves losing propaganda wars. Still, the revolution from the
past – of feudalism, of control and command structures, as practiced by many
nations claiming themselves to be Islamic – have not disappeared. Indeed, while
individuals may have transcended geo- and socio-traumas, nations use these
traumas to shore up identity.
SCENARIOS
What then of the future. What futures will
these transformations lead to? Four scenarios are probable.
Artificial
Society:
The first is the artificial society where the
victory of liberal ideology, the science and technology revolution make states
far less potent. Islam as currently constituted would not play a role in this
future, nor would most nations. It would remain a fast growing religion but
only in terms of population and not in terms of defining the agenda for the
next century. The population of believers would be poor and angry, searching
for someone to blame. Local leaders
would be quite willing to play the extremist card convincing believers that by
returning to the past, they would be safe from globalization. The losers would
be the most vulnerable – women and minorities as well as modernist muslims.
However, there will be plenty of the poor to
draw on to challenge the system.
Global
inequality (share in percent)
Source: UNDP (1999). Human Development Report, p. 22.
Writes Lydia Krueger:[16]
While the income gap
between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the
fifth in the poorest was 60 to 1 in 1990, up from 30 to 1 in 1960, it has risen
to 74 to 1 in 1997. The same
development of global polarization can be described looking at wealth and
poverty in a different way: While there are still 840
million people malnourished and 2.6 billion people have no access to basic
sanitation, the world’s 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in
the four years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion - with the assets of the top
three billionaires alone surpassing the combined GNP of all Least Developed
Countries (LDCs) and their 600 million people.
Is this likely to change?
In 1993 just 10
countries accounted for 84 percent of global research and development expenditures
and controlled 95 percent of the US patents of the past two decades. The dye is
set, technocracy will further create a divided world, with the right to the net
and the right to genetic therapy and modification becoming the battle cry of
the next decades.
Setting up walls against
technology will be the easiest path for Islamic nations. Far more useful would
be to develop technologies based on Islamic science – that is science and
technology focused on problems in poorer areas as well as science and technology
that was nature-based, what has been called nature-oriented technologies.
Dialogue of Civilizations:
But instead of the artificial
society, there are moves for a pluralistic dialogue of civilizations. Not a
clash (as this merely transposes realistic
politics on civilizational theory) but a deep dialogue of ways of knowing, of
understanding that we can longer export our problems to other, be they weaker
nations or the environment. This holistic view of the world challenges realist
notions of power and examines the future from the margins, from new models of
organizational cooperation (as with Net companies that are far less patriarchal
and hierarchical). An enlightened Islam that instead of projecting its own
defeats on the West and instead finding compassion for all human suffering can
provide a model of this alternative future.
What this means is the creation
of a world community around shared ideals. In postmodernity's decentring of the
world, space has been created for civilizations to articulate their own
self-images. Of course, the framework remains Western and secular but the
multicultural ethos now even challenges postmodernism .
For the Islamic world, what in
detail would such a future look like, mean?
First,
Ummah as an operating framework for the future challenges the three world
thinking of first, second and third worlds.[17]
As a concept it means three things: (1) The Ummah is a dynamic concept,
reinterpreting the past, meeting new challenges and (2) the Ummah must meet
global problems such as the environmental problem. "The Ummah as a
community is required to acknowledge moral and practical responsibility for the
Earth as a Trust and its members are trustees answerable for the condition of
the Earth. This makes ecological concerns a vital element in our thinking and
action, a prime arena where we must actively engage in changing things." [18]
(3) The Ummah should be seen a critical tool, as a process of reasoning itself
To
create a future based on the Ummah equity and justice are prerequisites. This
means a commitment to eradicating poverty. It means going beyond the
development debate since development theory merely frames the issue in
apolitical, acritical language.
This means rethinking trade, developing south-south trade as well as "new
instruments of financial accounting and transacting ... and the financing of
new routes and transportation infrastructure."[19]
But perhaps most significant is a commitment to literacy for all. As Ibrahim writes: "Only with access to
appropriate education can Ummah consciousness take room and make possible the
Ummah of tomorrow as a personification of the pristine morality of Islamic
endowed with creative, constructive, critical thought."[20]
Thus
what is called for is not modernism but a critical and open traditionalism that
uses the historic past to create a bright future – a post-asian and postwestern
dream. But Ummah should not become an imperialistic concept rather it requires
that Muslims work with other civilizations in dialogue to find agreed upon
principles. We need to recover that historically the Ummah meant models of
multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, and pluralist societies. A true
Ummah respects the rights of non-Muslims as with the original Medina state.
However,
as possible is a future without any name, a future of Islam but no muslims,
that is, a future with continued struggles between factions in the Islamic
world and between sects with the West continuing its millennium struggle
against its projected other. A bright future is possible but not certain.
What
will the West do?
While the idealist vision of an alternative
more pluralistic softer Islam remain, one that is future-oriented, ecological,
community-based, gender equal and electronically-linked, we are struck with not
an attempt to imagine a new politics for the Islamic world but to offer
imagined histories. Moreover, attempts to create alternatives remain mired in
strategic politics as with the Iranian revolution – in fighting for survival
space - or with creating a fortress to
stop globalism as with the Taliban.
But dramatic changes in the nature of
reality, truth, nature and sovereignty bode not well for the West as well.
Indeed, if we add the dramatically ageing population to this mix, the future of
the rich nations is in peril. With an entire age-cohort of youth workers not
available – with the median age moving from 20 to 40 and the ratio of worker to
retiree slipping from 3-1 to 1.5, what will the West do?[21]
It can dramatically enhance productivity thus eliminating the need for labour
and immigration or it can create new species of humans, or at least through
eugenics ensure its own genetic stock through eugenics. The seeds of eugenics
are not outside of Western history but squarely with Darwin. "We civilised
men to our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the
imbecile, the maimed and sick; we institute poor laws; an our medical men exert
their utmost skills to save the life of everyone to the last moment. Thus the
weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No-one … will doubt
that this must be highly injurious to the race of man," wrote Darwin. [22]
The relaxation of natural selection was
leading to genetic deterioration, to a large number of children of the
"scum."[23]
Alternatively it can allow the other into its
shores and create multicultural societies. But authentic multiculturalism
challenges the sovereignty of the nation-state at its roots, as does
globalization. Once in, there is no way back. Globalization thus sows its seeds
for a planetary society, or a return to brutal tribalism.
At heart then the issue is
not merely the future of the Islamic world but the future of the entire world.
Can we move to a gaia of civilization, an interpenetrating dialogue of
traditions where the damage of five hundred years of the victory of the West is
undone and the ways of knowing suppressed to achieve hypermodernity are tamed?
Can we create a postwestern view of the
future? At the very least to do so, we will need to imagine a future that
integrate ideational and sensate civilizations; integrates linear notions of
progress with cyclical notions of time; integrates economic growth with
distribution; imagines identity not only in the postmodern sense of fluid
selves but in a layered neo-humanistic sense where identity moves from the most
concrete to the most expansive and subtle.
Does humanity have the wherewithall to do so?
The signs are mixed. Just as the expansion of human rights continue, the battle
of local and national leaders to hold on to privilege strengthens. Nationalism
becomes a method of reducing some of the excesses of globalization but it does
so at an incredible cost, creating a politics of identity that is generally culturally
violent.
The dream of a good society, a postnational
world, has not gone away, however.
Globalism pushes back moral space but it does not vanquish it. The hope of
Islam –in dialogue with other civilizations - its offering to the future, is
essentially about that, asking what is the right future for us, how can we make
sure to include the ethical in all our decisions, in our magical ride to the
stars, to cloning, to creating a global governance structure. In this sense the
hope of Islam is the creation of a global ecumene that transcends any
particular religious framework, that opens up the possibility of a more just
society.
From a realist view, this is impossible, the
interests of the powerful will always overwhelm those of the weak. Battles within
religions, between strong and soft, are far more important than a dialogue of
civilizations.[24] Even if a new world system develops, it is
likely to be Western-based, technocratic, and based on notions that only will
only appear sensible to the West. The rich will take flight in their
genetically created fool proof bodies, the rest will die tortuous deaths on a
planet in environmental crisis.
Still, without a vision of the future, we
decline – we do not battle slavery, we acquiesce to injustice. The vision pulls
us forward, ennobles and enables us. It calls out the best of us. Muslims have
had glorious periods in human history, these can be recovered and used to move
onward.
In a workshop with leading Islamic scholars,
activists and technocrats, muslims called for a vision of the future with five
key attributes.[25]
·
self-reliant ecological communities
·
electronically linked khalifa, politically linked
·
gender partnership – full participation of females
·
an alternative non-capitalist economics that takes into account the
environment and the poor
·
the ummah as world community as guiding principle based on tolerance
·
leadership that embodies both technical and moral knowledge
These points may or may not come about. The
structures of oppression, the weight of history pulls us away from our desired
futures. But our desires gives us agency. The future can be door into an
alternative world. If we take this door, then the policy and implementation
question comes back but framed as: how can we make the moral the rational, the
easier path?
If we don't, we should take heed from this
warning:
Isn't it here that you take a half step wrong and wake
up a thousand miles astray.[26]
[1] Dr. Sohail Inayatullah, a political scientist, is Professor, International Management Centres, Visiting Academic, Queensland University of Technology and Professorial Research Fellow, Tamkang University. He is also the associate editor of New Renaissance (www.ru.org) and co-editor of the Journal of Futures Studies as well as fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and fellow of the World Future Studies Federation (www.worldfutures.org). His recent edited books include, The University in Transformation (Bergin and Garvey, 2000) and Macrohistory and Macrohistorians (Praeger, 1997). Forthcoming is: Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures (Adamantine)
[2] Indeed, given the fear of Islam in the West, “competing globalization” may be a far better term.
[3] Muslim scientists at the Stockholm Seminar in 1981 identified a set of fundamental concepts which define the Islamic paradigm. See Ziauddin Sardar, Islamic Science: the Way Ahead (booklet). Islamabad, OIC/COMSTECH, 1995, 39.
[4] Anwar Ibrahim, The Asian Renaissance. Singapore, Time Books, 1996. Quoted in Sohail Inayatullah, "A Dialogue of Civilizations," New Renaissance (Vol. 7, No. 3, issue 22, 1997), 39.
[5] Not to mention the numerous failed Islamic revolutions of late. The causes are, of course, a mixed. They include, the constrainted placed by the Western globalist system but as well Islamic nations location within patriarchal and feudal social systems.
[6] See Munawar Anees, The Future of Islam: Tie Up Your Camel. Journal of Futures Studies (May, 2000).
[7] See Zia Sardar, "Asian Cultures: Between Programmed and Desired Futures," in Eleonora Masini and Yogesh Atal, eds. The Futures of Asian Cultures. Bangkok, Unesco, 1993. 52.
[8] The movie Aladdin is one example. Aladdin, meaning the servant of god, by the end of the movie rediscovers himself as “just al.” This, of course, represents the secularization of Islam, its defeat in shaping world epistemic space. The movie could have been an attempt at a dialogue of cultures but instead it, as expected, commodified and cannibalized.
[9] www.who.org, See, World Health Organization, The Global Burden of Disease, 1996. http://www.who.int/. See, Caring for Mental Health in the Future. Seminar report commissioned by the Steering Committee on Future Health Scenarios. Kluver Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1992, 315. See as well: The Global Movement for Active Ageing. http://www.who.org/ageing/global_movement/index.html.
[10] See Zia Sardar Postmodernism and the
Other: The New Imperialism of Western Culture. London. Pluto, 1998. Also
see, Sohail Inayatullah, "Deconstructing the Year 2000," Futures (
Vol. 32, 2000), 7-15.
[11] For more on this, see, Levi Obijiofor, Sohail Inayatullah with Tony
Stevenson, "Impact Of New Information And Communication Technologies (Icts) On
Socioeconomic And Educational Development Of Africa And The Asia-Pacific."
Report to the Director-General, Unesco. Paris, 1999. Also see, Zia Sardar and
Jerome Ravetz, Cyberfutures. London,
Pluto Press, 1996.
[12] See, for example, Sohail Inayatullah, Situating Sarkar. Maleny, Australia, Gurukul, 1999 and Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Fitzgerald, eds. Transcending Boundaries. Maleny, Australia, Gurukul, 1999.
[13] Munawar Anees, Human Cloning: An
Atlantean Odyssey? Eubios Journal of
Asian and International Bioethics (Vol. 5, No. 1, 1995), 36‑37. Also
available from Periodica Islamica, 22
Jalan Liku, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 59100.
[14] Abdulaziz Sachedina 1997. "Testimony before the Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety of the
Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, 105th Congress." Ethics and Theology:
A Continuation of the National Discussion on Human Cloning. U.S. Government Printing Office. See: http://research.mednet.ucla.edu/pmts/Germline/Religion%20Philosophy/rpframes.htm (accessed April 11, 2000).
[15] For more on this, see, Sohail Inayatullah, "Further and Closer than Ever Before: The futures of religion," in Felix Marti, ed. The Contribution of Religion to the Culture of Peace, Barcelona, Centre Unesco de Catalunya, 1995
[16] Lydia Krueger, "North-South" in Kevin Rosner, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Paris, Unesco, 2002 (forthcoming).
[17] Anwar Ibrahim, "The Ummah and Tomorrow's World," Futures (Vol. 23, No. 3, April 1991), 302-310.
[18] Ibid., 307.
[19] Ibid., 308
[20] Ibid., 309
[21] See, Sohail Inayatullah, "Expanding our Knowledge and Ignorance: Understanding the Next One Thousand Years," The Australian Business Network Report (Vol. 7, No. 10, December, 2000), 13-17 and Sohail Inayatullah, "Ageing Futures: From Overpopulation to World Underpopulation, " The Australian Business Network Report (Vol. 7, No. 8, October, 1999), 6-10;.
[22] Charles Darwin in Richard Lynn, Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. Westport, Ct. Praeger, 1996, 5.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Felix Marti, ed. The Contribution of Religion to the Culture of Peace, Barcelona, Centre Unesco de Catalunya, 1995.
[25] Sohail Inayatullah, "Leaders envision the future of the Islamic Ummah," World Futures Studies Federation Bulletin (July 1996), Coverpage.. See, Sohail Inayatullah, "Futures Visions of Southeast Asia: Some Early Warning Signals," Futures (Vol. 27, No. 6, July/August, 1995), 681-688.
[26] The words of Yang Chu,
said, while weeping at the crossroads. From the Confucian Hsun-tzu