FUNDAMENTALISM AND ISLAM

The Quran

  We have made of you a middle nation. -- (II:143)

Karen Armstrong, Muhammad - A Biography Of The Prophet

 The West must bear some measure of responsibility for the
 development of the new radical form of Islam, which in some
 hideous sense comes close to our ancient fantasies. Today many
 people in the Islamic world reject the West as ungodly, unjust,
 and decadent . . .

 The new radical Islam is not simply inspired by hatred of the
 West, however. Nor is it in any sense a homogeneous movement.
 Radical Muslims are primarily concerned to put their own house in
 order and to address the cultural dislocation that many have
 experienced in the modern period. It is impossible to generalize
 about this more extreme form of the religion. It not only differs
 from country to country, but from town to town and village to
 village . . . Michael Gilsenan has argued that the differences
 are so great from one district to another that the term 'Islam' or
 'fundamentalism' is simply not useful in defining the current
 attempt to articulate the experience of people in the Middle East
 during the post-colonial period.

 We constantly produce new stereotypes to express our apparently
 ingrained hatred of 'Islam'. -- p. 42 to 43

 Another theme of the new fundamentalism has been an attempt to get
 Islamic history back on the right track and to make the umma
 [Muslim community] effective and strong once again. The Iranian
 revolution was not just an atavistic return to the past, but an
 attempt to impose decent values in Iran again. -- p. 265

Akbar S. Ahmed, Living Islam

 Western commentators often use -- or misuse -- terms taken from
 Christianity and apply them to Islam. One of the most commonly
 used is fundamentalism. As we know it, in its original application
 it means someone who believes in the fundamentals of religion,
 that is the Bible and the scriptures. In that sense every Muslim
 is a fundamentalist believing in the Quran and the Prophet.
 However, the manner that it is used in the media, to mean a
 fanatic or extremist, it does not illuminate either Muslim thought
 or Muslim society. In the Christian context it is a useful
 concept. In the Muslim context it simply confuses because by
 definition every Muslim believes in the fundamentals of Islam. But
 even Muslims differ in their ideas about how, and to what extent,
 to apply Islamic ideas to the modern world. -- p. 18 to 19

 Mainstream Sunni Islam is possibly the most broad-based, tolerant
 form and certainly the one with the largest number of followers --
 almost ninety percent of Muslims are Sunnis. However, the Wahabi
 school within the Sunnis believes in a strictly literal
 interpretation of the Quran. It dominates Saudi Arabia, which has
 a small population of about ten million but huge influence because
 of its oil revenues and as guardian of the holy cities of Makkah
 and Madinah. This school would interpret everything in the Quran
 literally: thus the chopping off of hands, death for adultery, and
 so on. -- p. 208

Paul Merritt Bassett, Grolier's Academic American Encyclopedia

 Fundamentalism is a term popularly used to describe strict
 adherence to Christian doctrines based on a literal interpretation
 of the Bible. This usage derives from a late-19th- and
 early-20th-century transdenominational Protestant movement that
 opposed the accommodation of Christian doctrine to modern
 scientific theory and philosophy. With some differences among
 themselves, fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of
 the Bible, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus Christ, the
 vicarious and atoning character of his death, his bodily
 resurrection, and his second coming as the irreducible minimum of
 authentic Christianity. This minimum was reflected in such early
 declarations as the 14-point creed of the Niagara Bible Conference
 of 1878 and the 5-point statement of the Presbyterian General
 Assembly of 1910.

 The name fundamentalist was coined in 1920 to designate those
 "doing battle royal for the Fundamentals." Also figuring in the
 name was The Fundamentals, a 12-volume collection of essays
 written in the period 1910-15 by 64 British and American scholars
 and preachers. . .

 . . . In the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, however, fundamentalism again
 became an influential force in the United States. Promoted by
 popular television evangelists (see RELIGIOUS BROADCASTING) and
 represented by such groups as the MORAL MAJORITY, the new
 politically oriented "religious right" opposes the influence of
 liberalism and secularism in American life. The term
 fundamentalist has also been used to describe members of militant
 Islamic groups.

Leon T. Hadar,
 The Green Peril: Creating the Islamic Fundamentalist Threat

 University professor, and former bureau chief for the Jerusalem
 Post, describes the creation of the myth of Islamic fundamentalism
 by the US foreign policy establisment.