ABSTRACT
All of the world’s major religions have been formed by globalization-a process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures become increasingly integrated through communication, transportation, and trade, and through which local cults are submerged or subsumed by world religions-each claiming to be the whole faith for the whole world. Samuel Huntington, famously, argued that the most important conflicts of the future will occur along cultural fault lines that track religious differences. He writes:
CIVILIZATION IDENTITY will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and, possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another. Why will this be the case? First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion.
