At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s Catholicism adjusted to requirements of the epoch for the sake of preservation of its influence allowed a renovation turnover which was made at the Second Vatican Convocation. This move ushered the ecumenical openness of the Church and had serious consequences expressed in dissemination of religious pluralism and tolerance, in the process of active absorption of secular life which accelerated de-Christianization of the Western society. Pope John Paul II started the ‘new evangelization' which was accompanied with expansion of outward openness of Catholicism and implemented in parallel with restoration of Vatican’s international influence. These processes did not arrest erosion of the religious conscience of Europeans but brought about erosion of their traditional values which acquired a threatening character. All attempts to bring Christian concepts of moral virtues and to confront degradation of a Westerner failed. Under Benedict XVI the Catholic Church is striving to recover its spiritual leadership and to keep its position on the forward frontiers of the world development began openly to undertake ideological leadership in the process of the world integration into a new global order, to form its moral code and impart the religious sense to the system of control over humankind which supranational ruling elites are constructing.

Training of the population for acceptance of a ‘new world order' presupposes a leveling of human conscience by way of creation of a global and comprehensive religion. Nowadays ‘New Age', an occult and spiritual movement makes a claim for the role of such religion. The distinctive characteristics of ‘New Age' movement are syncretism, pluralistic universalism, and global thinking. Spread of this movement in the Western society is carried on under disguise of various new religious movement and sects activities. In Europe these activities have acquired a threatening scale. In conditions of the European liberal moral tolerance domination occult sects employ flexible and mobile methods of penetration. In fact, the sects are penetrating with all spheres of the social, political and economic life and create a parallel network society. Heading for, first of all, education, science, culture, public health, and informatics the sects also actively integrate in the entrepreneurship and develop close contacts with the business world, the more so because the present-day multinational corporations are increasingly acquiring features of quasi-religious entities. Commonness of basic assumptions chiefs of sects and corporation business elite use in appraising a human personality and their own ultimate goals makes sects reliable economic partners of multinational corporations. Actually, sects borrow from multinational corporations their methods of management and control of individual conscience.

Since the late 1990s, after the demonstrative bombardment of Yugoslavia the world business elite straightforwardly and without reserve started to talk about necessity to impose the ‘global management' gradually inuring the public to recognition of this notion as a generally accepted one which expresses some objective and unavoidable process aimed at principles of the higher ethics and efficiency securing. This being said, it is absolutely obvious that in reality the question is about establishment of extra-legal private authority of corporate elites. This new power will provide for the maximum concentration of the capital in their hands and will secure the total control of main financial and information flows in the world. Insofar as the still lingering sovereignty remains to be the main obstacle on this path and it is impossible to eliminate the sovereignty outright the elites place their stake on whatever facilitates decomposition and erosion of the sovereignty, in particular, on regionalization, ethnic fragmentation and parochialism. European Union presents the ideal model in this respect and the new ‘world architecture' is created in accordance with this model. The policy pursued by EU leaders revealed quite obviously the true aim of this formation. This aim is to dismount national state formations per se and their replacement with a network of regions and ethnic regions that are to be the support structures of the ‘European construction' controlled from a single center. In practice integrations turns out to be the national disintegration, the continental area dismemberment and cut-off. Nowadays this process is described with a new term, glocalization. This term expresses the objective alliance between adherents of the global approach and champions of local interests. What are specific mechanisms, ways and means of this strategy implementation, whose interests this strategy serves — these are the principal issues considered in the article.

Ethnic regions play a key role in implementation of Europe geopolitical restructuring. The essence of the process consists in dismounting state structures and their replacement with network organization structure. Intensification and mobilization of European ethnic and national minorities occur neither spontaneously nor in accordance with local needs. The process is coordinated and managed from centers that have to ensure unity of minorities' demands and synchronization of their advancement. Big corporate business hides behind these centers. Using anti-universal minorities' ambitions big business by virtue of respective mechanisms directs these ambitions into anti-state streambed and makes minorities its objective allies. Though Germany performs the principal role in realization of this strategy it will not reap fruits of such political creativity.

How do European Muslim communities live today? Why is it that their number continues to grow, and what are the social, cultural and political consequences of this trend? These are the issues examined by Chetverikova in her article. The author conducts a thorough study of the different aspects of the Tarikat in Europe, focussing mainly on the painful process of restructuring Western society in the attempt to integrate the new and alien Muslim culture. The multicultural approach adopted in order to overcome social segregation and promote the mutual enrichment of different cultures had an adverse effect. Inconsistent and contradictory, it created a situation in which Islam in Europe began to identify itself as an independent cultural and religious community. Following a certain outside strategy, this community was firmly bent on defending its own interests.

The second part of the article deals with the consequences of ‘inter-confessional dialogue' which was initiated by the Western Christianity and changed into process of unilateral concessions. Europeans proved to be unprepared to meet not just demographic challenge but also the spiritual and geopolitical challenges of Islam. Sound analysts and geopoliticians of Europe acknowledge the fact nowadays. However the dominant European circles refuse to do the same for these circles follow interests of transnational elites, even though these interests go against needs of the European nations. Meanwhile aggravation of problems in development of international processes and deepening of internal European social and ethnic and religious contradictions are gradually acquiring the nature which puts the EC leadership in the situation when it is necessary to develop and implement independent strategy which has to proceed from genuine interests of «Europe of nations» and not of «Europe of transnational corporations».