The dubious threat of radical Islam on globalization

"The sheer horror of September 11 also conceals an important fact: By most measures, Islamic fundamentalism is the weakest of all the threats that globalization has yet faced. Socialism, the main ideological opponent of liberalism for most of the past century, combined a searing analysis of contemporary injustices with a compelling promise of a better future. Whatever its defects, Marxism spoke to the genuine discontents of millions of workers. It also attracted some of the finest minds in the West -- particularly during the dark days of the 1930s when capitalism was plagued by depression and unemployment. Half a century ago communism held sway over at least a sixth of the world’s population.

"Socialism also had a profound influence on plenty of democratic leaders who would never have described themselves as Marxists. In the 1940s and 1950s, European social democrats happily nationalized the commanding heights of the economy and restricted the free movement of capital; in the developing world, many leftish leaders went further and opposed free trade in goods in the name of 'import substitution.' The results may have been regrettable -- India’s domestic version of Coca-Cola was one of the most disgusting drinks invented by man -- but they were the work of democratically elected leaders, with the firm backing of many economists.

"By comparison, radical Islam seems a much weaker opponent. Rather than offering a futuristic workers' paradise, it looks back to the primitive world of the seventh century. The regime that came closest to embodying the radical ideal was the Taliban in Afghanistan. Even capitalism's harshest critics are unlikely to fashion an alternative out of a society that denied women education and debated whether the proper way to deal with homosexuals was to push them off tall buildings or throw them into holes and put stone walls on top of them."
--John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, "From Sarajevo to September 11" Policy Review, February 2003