Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 62
62 C H A P T E R N I N E : N E W WOR L D OR DE R Another major contemporary reason for the West to destroy Islam could well be derived from this viewpoint. It is no guarded secret that the superpowers of today have a dream of a ‘New World Order’, the head of which would be the USA, admittedly the most powerful nation in the world today. According to the thinking in the West, the development of sci- ence and technology has meant that the human race is moving towards a single world order. There is already a degree of political unification in the United Nations, albeit a cosmetic one in nature and totally ineffective in justly solving any problems. There is also a movement towards a single world intellectual culture, which is still far from being unified. Most of the world’s nations are accepting the secular aspect of Western intellectual cul- ture, but beyond that there is considerable diversity, especially in the field of religion. The realisation of the aims of this movement towards a unified world culture means that all the religions have to re-examine their attitudes towards this emerging unity, especially fundamentalist Islam. In fact, they would prefer all the religions to make compromises as their aim for the foreseeable future is a com- ity of religions. The all-powerful, all-forceful West is presenting this new order to the world and’inviting’ all to have a share in it, by contributing to it. The fear they have of Islam is that Islam boasts of self-sufficiency and that it is spreading like wild-fire amongst the nations of the world, including the West. Up until the birth of Islam, Christianity went relatively unchal- lenged and was able to spread to almost all parts of the world with the teaching that through Christ alone was the one and only way to salvation and that Christianity was superior to all other faiths.