What are the causes of rise of fundamestism? is it a revolt against modernity? or a result of it? the answers are here.

Essay by borabilgic June 2003

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The September 11 acts of terrorism brought out the dark face of fundamentalist terrorism whose sources and root causes must at some point be considered. The attacks on the twin towers where there used to be commercial and government offices, with commercial air planes in which there were many innocent people from different nationalities, cannot be forgiven and justified. Its committers and the leaders of them must certainly be found and punished.

Can these attacks and their aftermath be placed in the context of current discussions of globalization? Or were these attacks signs of the revolt of fundamentalism against globalization? Globalization is an ambiguous and multidimensional concept. Globalization, on one hand represents a positive development, that is to say, it increases connectedness and interconnectivity which are crucial for peoples who live on the same planet and share a common world. Hands of globalization force people to feel virtually at every level of social life.

Economically, globalization means greater exchange of goods and services which cannot be hindered by borders and tariffs. At the technological level, globalization means new devices for the exchange of ideas and feelings. Internet and World Wide Web is the leading representer of it. At the political level, globalization means a greater respect to human rights as a universal concept which maintains its importance in every single public on earth. There has been an increasing emergence for the institutions that have international missions as a consequence of the brutal regimes on different parts of the world. At the cultural level globalization means a greater consensus on certain shared values, like democracy, freedom and human rights. Cultural globalization also inreases the consciousness that everybody is a member of this globe. The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant described this consciousness as the consciousness in which "a transgression of rights...