Islamic Fundamentalism

13 Pages 3350 Words

: N. Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Muslim SE Asia, but Islamic fundamentalism represents a minority viewpoint in the context of world Islam”. We shall see though how “minor” this movement is after all.

What this definition does not explain is the difference between fundamentalists and extremists: fundamentalism clings on the basic principles of the Koran, while extremism,
is a belief system which evolves around the Shari’ah, the Islamic law which is based on the writings of Muhammad and other Islamic jurists but which nevertheless is an interpretation of the same Koran. Yet, Islamic movements concentrate on establishing the Islamic authority of the Shari’ah not exactly on what the main principles of the Koran are.

But how did Islamic fundamentalism begin? It all started in the 19th c. as a major counter response to the success of European colonialism. The Muslims had two different types of reactions: one of imitating and replicating the European customs and ways of governing (the Westernizers or the Islamic modernizers) and one of accepting the European political and educational models as a way of bringing back Islamic civilization, and not as direct substitutes. In the 20th c., the modernists accepted political ideas such as democracy, evolution, freedom of women and gained support especially after the end of WWI with the creation of new Muslim states like Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. After WWII, with the French/British colonies gaining independence, the Muslim world separated into nation states that were ruled by Western-influenced elites. But in the late 1960s, the Muslims no longer accepted the governments which they thought were corrupt and incapable of improving people’s lives; that was a major moment that signified the breakup of Muslims into several categories based on several ideologies. According to David Kibble , Muslims divided into 3 axes: the religious axe ( on one hand modernists, on the other r...