Globalization, Chaos, and Islam The Global Chaos Theorists Global chaos theories describe Islam as incapable of peacefully coexisting with other civilizational and religious entities in an age of globalization, where the destinies of cultures and peoples inexorably intertwine. They interpret the»new wars« of the post-Cold War era as evidence that when identities are based primarily upon religion, such as Islam, conflicts will undoubtedly erupt. 14 In the flushing afterglow of the Cold War victory, Fukuyama’s»end of history« thesis articulated that because the history of mankind has been molded by the dialectical clash of ideas, the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism signified the triumph of Western ideas and the end of history and the exhaustion of other ideologies. 15 Ideational competitors, such as socialism, had attempted to organize society accord­ing to a specific blueprint, but ultimately fell to the manifest good of Western liberal democracy. Taken to its logical end, the argument implies that if the engines of globalization, such as the nodes of technology, com­munications, and economic capital, rest within the West, and no compet­ing ideas threaten its ideological dominance, then the course of globali­zation will occur according to Western values, beliefs, and norms. 16 In response, however, prominent thinkers claimed that not only had the end of history never occurred, but new ideological forces would cre­ate constant sources of violent conflict that would disrupt the smooth flow of globalization. For instance, Hadar coined Islam as the»Green Peril«, green being the symbolic color of the religion, and described the dominant perception of Islam as»a cancer spreading around the globe, undermining the legitimacy of Western values«, as represented by the »Muslim fundamentalist, a Khomeini-like creature armed with a radical 14. See Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford: Stanford Press, 1999). 15. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 16. James Cronin,»Convergence by Conviction: Politics and Economics in the Emer­gence of the ›Anglo-American Model‹«, Journal of Social History Vol. 33: No. 4 (2000), 781–804. 88 Yom, Islam and Globalization ipg 4/2002