Islamic Values and the New Technology: are they Compatible?

Abstract

In this paper theories concerning the compatability of Islamic religious cultural ideology with Western capitalist technology are reviewed and criticised. Some theorists argue that Islam is antithetical to the requirements of a modern industrialised society, while others view Islam as compatible with the demands of Western technical change and point to its flexibility in shaping the various states where it is the national religion. We suggest that arguments should be focussed on internal weakness in terms of contradictions between the unity facilitated by the Islamic religion’s cultural-ideology at the level of the cultural ideology and the disunity caused by separate family units that fight among themselves for scarce resource, these contradictions between unity and disunity, touched upon by the Orientalists have not prevented the adoption of Western capitalist technology, but have allowed Western manipulation of Arab Islamic economies. Disunity on the level of the family, which has caused disunity among different classes of Islamic Arab society has allowed two conflicting internal dynamics to exist. One dynamic at the level of the family is weak, which allows Western technology and economic structures to be absorbed while Islamic religious cultural-ideology is so strong that a reaction is formed against Western cultural-ideology, which strengthens Islamic cultural-ideology and therefore the structure of the family. Palestinian Arabs are used as an example of this phenomenon because of their dramatic contact with Western technology.