that counts Islam as only one interlocutor among many. The next two sections will discuss these trends and their relevance to Islam’s relations with globalization. Secularism and Religion in an Era of Globalization It has been commonly assumed that religion would retrench its role as globalization continued. For instance, Harvey Cox’s 1965 book»The Sec­ular City« announced the collapse of religion to the extent that most of humanity within decades would be atheist or agnostic, as societies slowly democratized, pluralized, and modernized. 47 However, this supposition has faced tremendous contestation in the form of a religious revival in all parts of the world within the last half-century. Indeed, the»global reli­gious resurgence has challenged the expectations of modernization the­ory, the progressive secularization and Westernization of developing so­cieties. Religion has become a major ideological, social and political force.« 48 The rise of the nation-state as the defining mode of existence – that is, the organization of peoples into»imagined communities« in both the mind as well as on the map – operationalized secularism through the separation of church and state throughout the Christian world, and then the rest of the world via colonization and conquest. The reassertion of Muslims as conscious, rhetorically skilled political actors across the Muslim world, and even in non-Muslim countries like Russia and now much of Western Europe, is one facet of a broader reality – namely, that the global religious resurgence signifies a deep desire by considerable portions of the world population to establish meaning and order in a rapidly changing, fluid environment. All such religious move­ments, including the Islamic types,»share in common a return to the foundations or cornerstones of faith. They reemphasize the primacy of divine sovereignty and the divine-human covenant, the centrality of faith, 47. Harvey Cox, The Secular City (New York: Macmillan, 1965). 48. John Esposito,»Religion and Global Affairs: Political Challenges«, SAIS Review Vol. 18: No. 2(1998), 19. ipg 4/2002 Yom, Islam and Globalization 97