TEHRAN Today there are at least four types of imperialism in the world, military, political, economic, and cultural. In the past the imperialistic countries used military and political imperialism to establish themselves, and then initiated economic and cultural imperialism. Today the imperialist nations use economic and cultural imperialism as their chief weapons.
While in the past colonialism involved military conquest and the setting up of a colonial government, today's neocolonialism is economic colonialism.
Nations are allowed to be nominally independent, but they are not economically independent. Usually, their economies are run by the former colonial power. Globalization, the new neoliberal capitalism, has taken this a step further. The new free trade treaties such as GATT, NAFTA, and others are subordinating national economic sovereignty to these new international economic laws.
Nations that have signed the treaties are bound by these laws.
Currency unification and the privatization of central banks is also part of this plan.
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 privatized the U.S. currency and Central Bank. Now there is discussion of dollarizing all of North and South America. The Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties established the new single currency, the euro, and the new Eurobank, the European Central Bank (ECB), and began the process of privatization of the euro and the ECB. The upcoming Nice Treaty will probably move the process forward. The value of the African Financial Community's franc (CFA franc) is tied to the value of the euro.
By dominating the currencies, running the economies, and writing the new economic laws, neocolonialism achieves its objective of dominating the Third World. Western companies earning over one million dollars a day pay their workers in the Third World one dollar a day.
Cultural imperialism tries to convince people to abandon their culture. They trivialize and belittle non-Western cultures, pointing to the scientific and technological advances of the West as cultural superiority. Also, they reward collaborators with imperialism, creating new local upper and middle classes.
Often, these newly educated people admire the West and feel indebted to the West for their education, wealth, and new social status. They begin to look down upon the uneducated masses of their own people and identify with the Western upper and middle classes. Gradually they adopt Western culture and values. The cultural imperialists point to the success of these new elites as evidence of the fact that abandoning one's own culture and adopting Western values leads to success. In this way they attempt to trick the masses.
The imperialists fear any culture that disagrees with their materialistic outlook of life. They create many weapons to brainwash the people such as books, newspapers, magazines, films, music, art, television programs, and Internet to promote their materialistic world view.
Most of this cultural attack is aimed at young people, since their goal is to destroy the young generation and create a new generation of materialists. They fear Islam most of all because the Islamic world has retained its culture and is in the midst of a cultural renaissance which is attempting to reinforce Islamic values and reject Western values.
They also fear the size of the Islamic world, 20-25 percent of the world's population, and the increasing number of converts to Islam.
We Muslims must fight this cultural imperialism. We must teach the youth Islamic values, and that these are better than unbeliever values. The imperialists seek to achieve a breakdown in morality.
We should develop and encourage Islamic art, music, literature, film, television, radio, and Internet so that the youth have some form of entertainment. If we leave a void, the imperialists will fill it with their decadent culture.
There is a cultural war for the hearts of the youth. Dialogue among civilizations can only occur when everyone really wants dialogue, otherwise there will be a clash of civilizations. We should try to win this war for the hearts of the youth. All Islamic writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers should participate in this defense of Islam. Also, we can propagate Islam in this way. In conclusion, every Muslim should defend Islam against all forms of imperialism.