How does globalisation change our understanding of the relationship between religion and politics – beyond the general idea that the core of globalisation is to imply greatly increasing interdependence between states and peoples, with what happens in one part of the world affecting what occurs elsewhere? Yet this is to overestimate the extent to which people agree on what globalisation is and how it affects them. One common focus is to claim that many religious people – especially in many developing countries – regard globalisation as a thoroughly malign and comprehensive Westernising process, as it brings them into sustained contact with values, ideas and norms which many find on the whole unwelcome. This perception of globalisation is to judge it inherently undesirable, a flattening process whereby Western – especially American – capitalism and culture increasingly dominate the globe, including the countries of the developing world. A second aspect of this view is that the Western world keeps itself rich at the expense of the rest of the globe, especially non-Western territories, with poor people, who are often also religious, bearing the brunt of this damaging relationship. This is possible, it is asserted, because Western interests determine trading terms, interest rates and dominance of highly mechanised production, via control of important international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).