Jihad vs. McWorld

By reading the paper, we can notice that Benjamin R. Barber (the author), is comparing two things: Jihad and MacWorld. He defines the MacWorld as a process that presses nations into our commercially homogenous global network. The MacWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications and commerce. The author is much more focused on drawbacks of the MacWorld. We can learn from him that nowadays, all national economies are vulnerable to the inroads of larger, transnational markets within which trade is free, currencies are convertible, access to banking is open, and contrasts are enforced under law. We are in a world of interdependence, and this leaves even the wealthiest societies ever more resource- dependent and many other nations in permanently desperate straits.
But the MacWorld is in competition with forces of global breakdown, national dissolution, and centrifugal corruption. These forces are working in the opposite direction and are called Jihad. The Jihad’s aim is to redraw boundaries and resecure parochial identities in order to escape MacWorld’s dully insistent imperatives. So Jihad is a war for an expression of community, an end in itself and an emblem of unity. It offers a vibrant local identity, a sense of community, solidarity among kinsmen, neighbors and narrowly conceived.
To me I do think that Jihad war is done because most of countries do not want to lose their values or mix them with any others. For example, countries in which people strongly believe in Islam Values(like Saudite Arabia), the way citizens dress are different from the McWorld's tendencies of dressing which is spread all over the world. I strongly think that the author, by putting together McWorld and Jihad, wants to make it less complicated to understand. Because as we all know it, Jihad was done on the purspose to stop the expansion of fanaticism and Christhianicity. And, he wants to show us that Jihad is doing the same thing nowadays, but against MacWorld.