A paper presented at the Islamic Conference, Cairo, Egypt, March 27-30, 2007)
* * *
Today the question for a Muslim, any Muslim, is not "Who am I?" but rather, "Who are we?"
Humans, in contrast to other social animals, do not just live in societies -- they produce societies in order to live. It follows logically then, that Muslims can only know themselves by knowing who they are in relation to others.
But Muslim countries, more than any others in today's world, are being subjected to dangerous forces of recolonialization due to: (a) their natural resources, especially oil; (b) their strategic geopolitical positions, and; (c) their huge potential consumer market of more than 1.2 billion people.
By "recolonialization," I mean the cumulative economic and political injustices committed against Muslim countries by the West, which in some cases have escalated into military aggression, invasion, and occupation.
These forces of recolonialization are working in the context of an unbalanced and unfair system of globalization that benefits mainly the world's rich and powerful nations. Both historically and in our post-modern times, colonialization and re-colonialization do not only mean that the West is trying to impose its political and economic interests on others, but its culture as well.
Full paper is posted at:
http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/ar/lang_religon.php
