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The History of Human Rights From Ancient Times To The Globalization Era Micheline Ishay Sample

The document discusses 'The History of Human Rights From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era' by Micheline Ishay, which explores the evolution of human rights through various historical contexts. It highlights key themes such as the impact of globalization, the debates surrounding human rights, and the challenges faced in promoting these rights in the modern era. The book is available in multiple formats and includes a comprehensive analysis of human rights development from ancient civilizations to contemporary issues.

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21 views126 pages

The History of Human Rights From Ancient Times To The Globalization Era Micheline Ishay Sample

The document discusses 'The History of Human Rights From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era' by Micheline Ishay, which explores the evolution of human rights through various historical contexts. It highlights key themes such as the impact of globalization, the debates surrounding human rights, and the challenges faced in promoting these rights in the modern era. The book is available in multiple formats and includes a comprehensive analysis of human rights development from ancient civilizations to contemporary issues.

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yanlingye9882
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The History
of Human Rights
From Ancient Times
to the Globalization Era

With a New Preface

Micheline R. Ishay

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS


Berkeley · Los Angeles · London
University of California Press, one of the most
distinguished university presses in the United States,
enriches lives around the world by advancing
scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the
UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contribu-
tions from individuals and institutions. For more
information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press


Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.


London, England

© 2004, 2008 by Micheline R. Ishay

Excerpt from The Origins of Totalitarianism by


Hannah Arendt, copyright © 1973, 1968, 1966, 1958,
1951, 1948 by Hannah Arendt, copyright renewed by
Mary McCarthy West, reprinted by permission of
Harcourt, Inc.

isbn 978-0-520-25641-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier


version of this book as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ishay, Micheline.
The history of human rights : from ancient times
to the globalization era / Micheline R. Ishay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-520-23496-0 (alk. paper).
isbn 0-520-23497-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Human rights—History. I. Title.

jc571.i73 2003
323'.09—dc21 2003012769

Manufactured in the United States of America

16 15
10 9 8 7 6 5 4

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum


requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997)
(Permanence of Paper).8
For David,
Adam, Elise, and their generation
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Preface to the 2008 Edition ix


Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction 1
The Definition, the Argument, and Six Historical Controversies 3
Structure 14
1. Early Ethical Contributions to Human Rights 15
Religious and Secular Notions of Universalism 18
Liberty: The Origins of Tolerance 27
Equality: Early Notions of Economic and Social Justice 35
How to Promote Justice? 40
Fraternity, or Human Rights for Whom? 47
2. Human Rights and the Enlightenment: The Development
of a Liberal and Secular Perspective on Human Rights 63
From Ancient Civilizations to the Rise of the West 66
Freedom of Religion and Opinion 75
The Right to Life 84
The Right to Private Property 91
The State and Just-War Theory 99
Human Rights for Whom? 107
3. Human Rights and the Industrial Age: The Development
of a Socialist Perspective on Human Rights 117
The Industrial Age 120
Challenging the Liberal Vision of Rights 127
Universal Suffrage, Economic and Social Rights 135
Challenging Capitalism and the State 145
Human Rights for Whom? 155
4. The World Wars: The Institutionalization
of International Rights and the Right to Self-Determination 173
The End of Empires 175
The Right to Self-Determination 181
Institutionalizing Human Rights 199
Human Rights for Whom? 229
5. Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights 245
Globalization and Protest Movements 248
Defining Rights in the Era of Globalization 256
After September 11: Security versus Human Rights 279
Human Rights for Whom? 293
6. Promoting Human Rights in the Twenty-first Century:
The Changing Arena of Struggle 315
Medievalism and the Absence of Civil Society 318
The Emergence of Civil Society during the Enlightenment 324
The Expansion of Civil Society in the Industrial Age 329
The Anti-Colonial Struggle 335
The Globalization of Civil Society? Or an Assault on the Private
Realm? 340

Appendix: A Chronology of Events and Writings Related to


Human Rights 357

Notes 369

References 405

Index 431
Preface to the 2008 Edition

W
hen this book was submitted to my publisher in 2002, it
characterized the human rights community as fragmented into
a variety of single-issue agendas, and attributed that frag-
mentation to factors associated with the end of the cold war and accel-
erating globalization. Even then, one could discern a growing fissure over
a set of interrelated policy debates on important global issues. One of
those debates was over globalization itself, embraced by one side as open-
ing new space for human rights progress, and denounced by the other as
a source of deepening global poverty.
Yet if this first post– cold war human rights debate could be seen ret-
rospectively as a sign of new fault lines, no single event or issue had suf-
ficient force to split the human rights community into two starkly
opposed worldviews. That galvanizing issue, sparked by the events of
September 11, would be what U.S. leaders have described as the “global
war on terror.” During the five years following the publication of this
book in the United States, a second debate now crystallized over whether
the United States, the major maestro of globalization, should be seen as
the global guardian of human rights or as an empire bent on economic,
military, and ideological domination.
As I write this preface in August 2007, it appears that we may be at
the dawn of a third debate, born out of the ashes of the American fiasco
in Iraq and the resultant Democratic Party takeover of the United States
Congress in the November 2006 elections. These events combined to place
neo-conservative defenders of unrestrained globalization and democra-
tization, enforceable by U.S. military power, on the defensive. This time,
while the global progressive human rights community must continue to
confront its old neo-liberal and neo-conservative adversaries, advocates
of universal human rights are also taking up the challenge posed by reli-
gious (or cultural) fundamentalism in its Islamist and other religious
extremist forms.
This foreword offers a perspective on these interacting layers of
human rights debate—between globalists and anti-globalists, unilater-
ix
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x Preface to the 2008 Edition

alists and multilateralists, and between market ideology and religious fun-
damentalism—suggesting in all three cases that human rights progress will
require moving beyond Manichean divisions. I will begin by describing
the first two phases of the post– cold war debate over globalization and
human rights, then move on to characterize the new debate, offering my
view of the basic stance that the human rights community needs to take.

the first debate:


globalists versus anti-globalists
This debate is the one most familiar to those interested in the human rights
implications of economic globalization, and much has been discussed in
my first edition. For one side, the side with the ear of political elites
throughout the developed world, the collapse of the Soviet Union opened
the door to the global triumph of a free market economy.
This position has been advanced by mainstream U.S. politicians of both
major political parties, who have supported free trade agreements (e.g.,
NAFTA and the WTO) without insisting on serious labor standards, pro-
fessing along with leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair that expanded
trade will ineluctably help universalize liberal notions of human rights.
Those who hold this position are generally confident that economic lib-
eralization, once it takes root in otherwise protectionist or barren
economies, will promote, at least in the long run, affluent societies and
stable democratic institutions.
By contrast, for the anti-globalist activists of the world social forums,
globalization has shaped a new imperial economic regime, one in which
the IMF, WTO, the G8, and other international institutions continue to
reflect the self-interest of the wealthiest states. For anti-globalists, neo-
liberalism has produced a sinister reality: one in which labor rights have
been undercut and welfare policies scrapped; one in which bait-and-switch
immigration policies shaped by elites in the privileged world have inten-
sified the hardships suffered by refugees and immigrants fleeing from
poverty, repression, or war; one in which the poorest countries and peoples
are getting poorer in both relative and absolute terms; and one in which
environmental degradation driven by pollution and deforestation has
endangered the livelihood of indigenous peoples.
That leftist critique of globalization has a right-wing variant in devel-
oped states, where the primary concern is with the loss of businesses and
jobs to low-wage regions. The result has sometimes been strange coali-
tions between left and right, as when the progressive American activist
Preface to the 2008 Edition xi

Ralph Nader joined the right-wing, nationalist leader Pat Buchanan in


opposing NAFTA and the WTO. Unlike mainstream globalists, who ration-
alize their human rights strategies in terms of political and security rights,
anti-globalists tend to highlight economic, social, and environmental rights.
There is, of course, considerable middle ground between the extremes
on both sides of this debate, and it is worth considering the outlines of
a position around which most human rights supporters might unite.
Can one carve a position between globalists and anti-globalists?
Economic development programs, argued Nobel Prize–winning Indian
economist Amartya Sen, should not primarily require the “blood, sweat,
and tears” of the poor but should design policies that link economic
growth to respect for human freedom and other central tenets of human
rights.1 Put another way, social, political, civil, and security rights are
constitutive parts of development. Sen’s insistence that development poli-
cies must advance the full spectrum of universal human rights provides
criteria for criticizing both sides in the debate between free-traders and
anti-globalists. In a sense, he reminds us of the integrated projects of
post–World War II reconstruction and the 1948 Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
If Sen’s position on sustainable development has gained wider cur-
rency in human rights circles, the connection between economic devel-
opment and sustainable democratic transitions still needs to be
strengthened. The underemphasis on economic welfare has its roots in
the free market ideology that prevailed in U.S. scholarship and statecraft
for decades, from the political science literature on modernization in the
1970s and 1980s to the Washington Consensus in our current era. That
dominant approach to economic development myopically emphasized
only two dimensions of rights: the property rights underpinning market
economies and the progress toward political freedom that presumably
flowed from property rights. Thus, during the cold war, when mass move-
ments of the poor in the Third World insisted on socioeconomic rights,
they encountered repression or worse. Once the cold war ended, the pre-
vailing view was that the poorest countries and peoples could be safely
ignored. The legacy of neo-liberalism, however, was not the capitalist
“end of history” envisioned by the modernization literature, but resur-
gent, sometimes authoritarian left-leaning regimes in Latin America and
the rise of radical Islamist movements in much of the Muslim world. Both
types of movements draw support based on their attentiveness to the wel-
fare of the poor, even as both tend to disparage the individual liberties
so valued by the promoters of free markets and democratization.
xii Preface to the 2008 Edition

A viable middle ground between pro- and anti-globalization factions


would have to integrate socioeconomic rights into the globalization proj-
ect. In the face of the high levels of poverty, repression, and conflict afflict-
ing the poorest areas of the world, the success of that enterprise would
require both a massive commitment of resources and the construction of
practical strategies, tailored to a host of distinctive cases, that effectively
address the complex interconnections between political, legal, economic,
and security policies. Since an enterprise of that scale was, and remains,
unrealistic, it follows that any feasible approach toward those goals would
have to be highly selective, focusing on areas small enough to offer hope
of tangible results.
For instance, while the United States and other powerful states evi-
dently lack the will and resources to transform every area affected by
underdevelopment and oppression, a sustained investment of political
and economic resources in selected places might well create new outposts
of democracy that could in turn generate further regional economic
growth, democratization, and human rights. How would this start? It
could take the form of New Deal–style public works projects that relieve
unemployment by putting money directly into the hands of ordinary work-
ers. These projects would be designed to build infrastructure for future
economic development, such as ports, power plants, and desalinization
plants, which would then stimulate public and private investment. Such
outposts (in Palestine or even the Sudan, for example) could represent
magnets that would then stimulate further regional economic growth,
democratization, and human rights.
Empowering women should also be part of a long-term strategy to
democratize the Middle East, as well as other regions of less geopoliti-
cal interest to the United States and its allies. For instance, providing means
for women to earn money (with microlending, literacy efforts, vocational
training, etc.) even within the world’s poorest and most repressive states
can galvanize democratic forces, just as suffragette efforts stimulated dem-
ocratic impulses in Western civil societies during the late nineteenth cen-
tury. One needs to free women, and men will be freer to join them in
challenging political oppression.
In short, the indivisibility and inalienability of security, political, social,
economic, and cultural human rights objectives in all efforts (postwar
reconstruction or others) should always be kept in sight. In terms of what
I have called the first debate—between advocates and opponents of eco-
nomic globalization—it is not impossible to conceive a reasoned synthesis
Preface to the 2008 Edition xiii

that enhances economic opportunity while respecting the spectrum of


universal rights.

the second debate:


spartacists versus caesarists
In the wake of September 11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, U.S. foreign policy
largely shifted from preoccupation with economic issues to debate over
the pursuit of security, in the context of a so-called clash of cultures or
civilizations. Whether grievances against the Western architects of global-
ization were couched in political, economic, or cultural terms, hatred and
violence against the West (and particularly the United States) were now
rationalized as the inevitable “blowback” resulting from long-standing
oppression. Those sentiments in turn unleashed fear of the Muslim world,
strengthened demagogic assertions of Western superiority, and made it
politically viable to insist on adopting whatever means were allegedly
necessary for security.
Confronting both the tragedy of September 11 and subsequent attacks,
and the enormity of the American military and counterterrorism response,
the pre–September 11 preoccupations of the human rights community
were now overshadowed by a searing divide over a central question: the
human rights implications of America’s economic superiority and global
military campaign. For many on both sides of this debate, America was
viewed in starkly positive or negative terms—either as a crucial entity
for the worldwide advance of human rights or as an empire disposed to
quash human rights in the pursuit of unlimited power.
I have elsewhere labeled the protagonists in this debate as multilater-
alists or “Spartacists” and unilateralists or “Caesarists.”2 The Spartacist
designation derives from the Thracian Spartacus, the famous leader of a
slave rebellion against imperial Rome. Today’s Spartacists share an anti-
authoritarian, anti-imperialist, and often isolationist view. Most Spartacists
are highly critical of unfettered economic globalization, sanctioned by
U.S. hegemonic influence in the cultural, political, and military realms.
Human suffering, Spartacists argue, is of little concern for U.S. policy
makers, who draw attention to it primarily in order to justify interven-
tion against outlaw regimes that dare to challenge the geopolitical or eco-
nomic interests of the United States and its allies. From this perspective,
human rights and humanitarian rhetoric are mere subterfuges to hide impe-
rial self-interest. Not only are their motives disingenuous, the results,
xiv Preface to the 2008 Edition

including interventions against so-called rogue regimes, are likely to make


human suffering worse.
On the other hand, the Caesarist worldview—named after the Roman
emperor who spread republicanism with ruthless force—maintains that
in a world of terrorism, rampant nationalism, civil wars, and proliferating
mass destruction weapons, the United States is the only power able to
counter international dangers driven by fundamentalist groups or author-
itarian regimes. For suffering individuals within weaker states, Caesarists
argue, there is no alternative but to gravitate within the orbit of U.S. influ-
ence, an outcome that will ultimately deliver economic and human rights
benefits. As the United States wages war against anti-democratic forces,
it is accepted that trampling on civil rights and international conventions
may be necessary means to achieve victory. In the end, however, Caesarist
foreign policies claim to extend liberty to all of humanity.
In addition to the divide over the legitimacy of U.S. assertive unilat-
eralism, the issue of how to build a democratic culture in conflict-ridden
civil societies also continues to divide the human rights community. To
what extent (if any) should the United States (and its Western allies) take
responsibility for nation building in the aftermath of allegedly humani-
tarian interventions? For Caesarists like the historian Niall Ferguson, the
United States has been too long in denial of its imperial role and must
learn to take seriously its formidable responsibilities in the world. It is the
only power, Ferguson maintains (with other like-minded Caesarists), that
has the capacity to bring prosperity, peace, and human rights to divided
societies in an increasingly hostile world environment. The problem, he
argues, is that the United States, unlike its predecessor, Great Britain, has
lacked the will to make a long-term commitment to nation building.3
To provide insufficient troops to ensure security in the aftermath of
the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, or to fail to halt gross human rights
violations in Liberia, Darfur, and other trouble spots of limited geopolit-
ical importance to the United States, argue Caesarists, will hasten the
demise of the American empire. The British Empire sent legions of career
civil servants abroad to permanent posts, and the American empire will
be short-lived if it fails to emulate that model. In that regard, it is a dan-
gerous sign that the United States has failed to train and dispatch thou-
sands of Arabic-speaking envoys to the Middle East, armed with the
requisite skills to move its democratization agenda forward. Caesarists
argue that the United States can reclaim its moral authority only by fully
committing itself to the full spectrum of nation-building activities.
The prospect of such a U.S. commitment to promoting democratic
Preface to the 2008 Edition xv

development has, however, been intensely challenged by Spartacists. For


Chalmers Johnson, the fact that the United States has spread hundreds
of its military bases throughout geopolitically and economically strate-
gic areas of the world is sufficient evidence of its long-standing imperi-
alist nature.4 Moreover, that the United States has denied rights specified
in the Geneva Convention to Guantanamo prisoners, and has conducted
torture of alleged insurgents in Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, demon-
strates the emptiness of its claim to represent an “empire of liberty.”
Spartacists add that the United States has used the war on terror to cre-
ate an elaborate system of surveillance, which has enabled authorities to
violate privacy rights, to harass domestic dissidents, and to deport peace-
ful immigrants as criminals—thereby denying fundamental rights of hos-
pitality to foreigners.
These abuses cumulatively reveal the Janus face of the American
empire’s purported “good intentions.” Spartacists predict that the United
States will suffer other cases of blowback like the one experienced on
September 11, arguing that such attacks are due not to U.S. neglect of
global problems, but to the excessive and repressive nature of U.S. global
commitments, as the United States supports authoritarian regimes in places
like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan whenever it appears to serve its economic
or geopolitical interests. That long record of support for “friendly” dic-
tators throughout the cold war has culminated in the current refusal to
submit to international institutions such as the International Criminal
Court, preferring to withhold evidence that could implicate its own offi-
cials during truth commission investigations (in Haiti, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Chile, and Chad among other post-authoritarian countries
where the United States supported former dictators).5 This history, as inter-
preted by the Spartacists, shows all too well that the United States evades
its own standards of justice while calling for democracy and human rights
for the rest of the world. Even for those more inclined to acknowledge
some measure of good intentions on the part of the United States, it is
daunting to recognize that most U.S. military occupations did not lead
to the establishment of democratic governments.6
While Spartacist-Caesarist debates have raged since the end of the cold
war, the escalating confrontation between Spartacists (such as Noam
Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, and Eric Hobsbawm) and Caesarists (such
as former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Weekly
Standard editor William Kristol), reached a zenith over U.S. policy toward
Iraq. Indeed the Iraq debate dramatized the extent to which the division
over the U.S. global role had supplanted old ideological differences over
xvi Preface to the 2008 Edition

human rights. While the Caesarist human rights justification for the inter-
vention in Iraq became the linchpin of the American neo-conservative
foreign policy platform, it was also supported by many liberal and left-
ist human rights activists, including journalists and scholars like Michael
Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens, who regarded the approaching war
in Iraq as an opportunity—whatever the role of American geopolitical
interests—to eradicate a genocidal regime.
In the words of British historian Eric Hobsbawm, the question was
“how is the world to confront—contain—the U.S.?” “Some people,”
Hobsbawm observes, “believing that they have not the power to con-
front the U.S., prefer to join it. More dangerous are those who hate the
ideology behind the Pentagon, but support the U.S. project on the grounds
that it will eliminate some local and regional injustices. This may be called
an ‘imperialism’ of human rights.”7 This position mobilized anti-war
demonstrations throughout the world, and ironically was joined by the
nationalist right, including U.S. politician and commentator Pat Buchanan,
leader of France’s Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Austrian polit-
ical leader Georg Haider, who viewed the war in Iraq as “America’s war
against civilization.”
How can the human rights community carve a strategic position be-
tween charges of indifference to human rights abuses, to which Spartacists
are vulnerable, and accusations of imperialism, associated with Caesarist
support for wars against tyrannical regimes? Can one be both a Spartacist
and a Caesarist, or can we transcend this divide?
In the absence of a cohesive vision of human rights policy, one can
deplore with the Spartacists the long record of human rights abuses in
the foreign or domestic policies of all five permanent members of the UN
Security Council or within NATO, supporting with Caesarists those
instances when military action, even if unilateral, advances the causes
of human rights, while accepting the general principle that the United
Nations and local, motivated NGOs are preferable mechanisms for resolv-
ing humanitarian crises.
If multilateralism offers in principle a better way to deal with human-
itarian crises from Bosnia to Iraq, one should recognize that the United
Nations has not shown the level of credibility and reliable musculature
needed to confront these crises. Needless to say, international legal doc-
uments have hardly provided clear guidelines to human rights sympathizers.
For instance, while the UN charter decreed the inviolability of sovereign
states, the Convention against Genocide permitted the indictment of indi-
viduals charged with crimes against humanity, thereby circumventing state
Preface to the 2008 Edition xvii

authority. Further, over the years, the members of the UN Security Council
failed to show the level of commitment to human rights envisioned by
the founders of the United Nations, and the international body conse-
quently attracted criticism from human rights supporters.
If each humanitarian crisis since the cold war has prompted specula-
tion over how best to redesign new international or multilateral institu-
tions, such institutional questions need to be addressed within the context
of today’s overriding challenges. In the ordre du jour, it is the confrontation
of the forces of market fundamentalism and those of religious funda-
mentalism that prod us toward an engagement in a third debate.

the third debate:


the clash of fundamentalisms
To a substantial degree, the outcome of the Caesarist-Spartacist debate
depended on U.S. behavior and its degree of success in Iraq. As the occu-
pation unfolded, the occupiers’ moral failure, exemplified by Abu Ghraib,
their heedlessness of the economic needs of ordinary Iraqis, and other
manifestations of incompetence by the Bush administration have com-
bined substantially to discredit the Caesarist perspective, as Spartacist
Democrats took over Congress, more and more American Republicans
felt deserted by their president, and the neo-conservatives descended into
internal bickering.
Yet lest we find ourselves celebrating the prospective defeat of impe-
rialism in Iraq, it is worth reminding ourselves that in this case the most
dynamic global enemies of George W. Bush are not themselves champi-
ons of human rights. Instead, the rising fortunes of the Taliban in Afghan-
istan, of Ahmadinejad in Iran, of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of Al Qaeda’s
numerous branches and allied groups represent the advance of movements
that violently repudiate universal human rights, and that embrace forms
of mystical, violent irrationalism that bear many of the features of Western
historical fascism. If neo-liberalism and then neo-conservatism unwittingly
nourished these dark forces, it is surely insufficient to condemn the neo-
cons, celebrate the political downfall of George W. Bush’s tragic presi-
dency, and self-righteously withdraw from global engagement. In that
sense, the human rights community faces a twofold challenge: confronting
the fundamentalism of the market while simultaneously confronting the
belligerent fundamentalism of religions.
Leaders of the United States and Great Britain Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher launched what George Soros would later call market
xviii Preface to the 2008 Edition

fundamentalism. Market fundamentalism, according to Soros, is the belief


that “competitive markets are always right–or at least they produce results
that cannot be improved. The financial markets, in particular are sup-
posed to bring prosperity and stability–the more so, if they are completely
free from government interference in their operation and unrestricted
in their global reach.”8 But as Soros has pointed out, market fundamen-
talism, by appealing to the concept of equilibrium, misinterprets the causes
of economic growth. “It is not the tendency of equilibrium that creates
wealth but the release of energies,” he explained. “Wealth creation is a
dynamic process. It does not regulate itself, and does not ensure social
justice.”9
Market fundamentalism, one might add, is worse than bad econom-
ics. Its ideological prevalence, starting in the 1980s, reinforced the dark
aspects of Western values in the eyes of the world’s poor. It was the antithe-
sis of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal call to achieve
“freedom from want,” replacing it with Gordon Gekko’s proclamation
to a crowd of stockholders in the movie Wall Street that “greed . . . is
good.”
That distorted formulation of Western values provided a perfect op-
portunity for Islamist fundamentalists to fill the void left by Western aban-
donment of the poor. Thus Islamist clerics in the Middle East denounce
capitalists as individuals devoted to personal profit, as agents driven by
crass materialism and unlimited self-interest. These evils, and/or other
conspiratorial designs, are attributed in large measure to Jews, who must
be stripped of their enormous power and perhaps destroyed completely.
Other religious, ethnic, and national groups are similarly implicated. From
these religious fundamentalist perspectives, in their Islamist or other reli-
gious forms, democracy is despicable, since it implies that individual pref-
erences can be allowed to interfere with the higher communal purpose,
which is fully comprehended only by the leader. Yet for Islamist funda-
mentalists, it is a moral obligation to meet the basic needs of ordinary
people. The fact that such needs were so neglected, first by colonialists
and then by corrupt secular elites, has given these fundamentalists a pow-
erful weapon with which to spread their beliefs.
Thus, if laissez-faire is the first commandment of globalization pros-
elytes, fundamentalists draw from religious texts the obligation of eco-
nomic altruism and along with it, belligerence against infidels as the
antidotes to Western greed and decadence. Without overstating the par-
allel between the dogmatism of market fundamentalism and that of reli-
gious fundamentalism, can we carve a new space beyond the Manichean
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