Research Paper on:
Middle East's Religious States and Secular Nationalism

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
in the Middle East and other areas, such as Diasporas, organizing a state and providing it with a moral basis for legitimacy would have to abide by the needs of  both sectors, inasmuch as there cannot be social, political or economic adaptation to the exclusion of either one. Clearly, the impact upon local communities from modern governments and the  global economy has been such that the eruption of individuality has been noted in abundance. How do these two frameworks, as well as the persistence of tribalism/ethnicity and the  politics of sociability help one to understand contemporary communities, such as Palestinians, Syrian Jews, and Egyptian villagers? When one ultimately considers the vastness of global culture as it relates  to social politics, it becomes significantly clear that the progression of secularism has unleashed an entirely divergent appropriation of perceived personal rights in the Middle East.  According to William H. Swatos, Jr., author of Globalization and Religious Fundamentalism, the global resurgence of religion that occurred in the 1970s served to be a platform  for fundamentalist interpretation with regard to religious scriptures. It is the authors contention that this reawakening has been instrumental in a significant distortion of traditional religious interpretation. As  religion has become globalized over the past three decades, it has taken on a decidedly different fa?ade: that of what is contrary to all it has represented in the past.  "This claim is never made, of course, by fundamentalists themselves, but it is easily documented by historical surveys of the faith traditions they claim to represent" (Swatos 287).  In his assessment of how well the world has fared since the overwhelming resurrection of religious belief, Swatos argues that the movement -- in