To the memory of my teacher,Joel Kraemer

Those with memories long enough will remember the terms“Jihad” and “McWorld” as used in a 1992 Atlanticmagazine article and 1995 book by Benjamin Barber.Back in 1992, “Jihad” was used by Barber asshorthand for tribalism: Jihad, wrote Barber in1992, “is a retribalization of large swaths ofhumankind by war and bloodshed: a threatenedLebanonization of national states in which cultureis pitted against culture, people against people,tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundrednarrowly conceived faiths against every kind ofinterdependence, every kind of artificial socialcooperation and civic mutuality.” Barber's accountfails to take seriously the universal claims putforward by actual jihadis: part of the veryexpensive education we have all acquired since 1992is that we all know now that jihad for a universalreligion is as much opposed to tribalism as isMcWorld. In fact, global jihad seems in manyrespects to be the effective truth of McWorld.Islamic State in its own way stands for “thinkglobally, act locally” as much as does Greenpeace,Barber's preferred example.

McDonalds isn't what it was in 1992, so perhaps weshould update Barber's lingo and write MacWorld forMcWorld. Apple may have made a sensible businessdecision when they refused to cooperate with the FBIto open the phones of the 2015 San Bernardinoterrorists, one of whom had come from Pakistan toAmerica on a spousal visa in order to wage waragainst the infidels; Apple's calculation seems tohave been that there are many more hard and softIslamists among Apple's customers throughout theworld than patriotic Americans. Could it be that thebest practical alternative to endless jihad isn'tthe closed tribal society, or even the closedcommercial state idealized by Fichte, but a globalcommercial society in which every McDonalds isHalal, regardless of the language in which the menuappears on the ordering screens?

Both universalist religion and universalist reasonchallenge the goodness and justice of the particularpolitical community. In his Commentary on Plato's “Republic,”Averroes expounds Plato's purported justificationthe closed and bounded political community on thebasis of universally valid principles to which allrational people ought to agree.