Fundamentalism

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FUNDAMENTALISM

The term fundamentalism generally describes a religious attitude or organized movement that adheres to most or all of the following characteristics: a holistic approach to religion, one that sees religion as a complete moral or legal code, providing answers for all life's questions; a tendency toward literal understanding of scriptures; a belief in a foundational golden age, when the principles of the faith were perfectly applied, and a desire to recreate such a period today; suspicion and sometimes renunciation of not only people of other faiths, but also supposedly hypocritical adherents of the same faith; and discomfort with or rejection of many aspects of modern, secular societies. The term was coined in the early twentieth century to refer to a Protestant movement in the United States that reasserted a literal reading of the Bible in opposition to the new biblical criticism and to such scientific theories as evolution, which had gained currency at the time. Because of its Christian origins, many scholars and religious activists reject its use in other religious contexts. The term is particularly controversial in the Islamic context, where, it is argued, "Islamic fundamentalism" is used indiscriminately to describe all Islamic activists, whether they are radicals or moderates, and because it is generally laden with pejorative meanings, such as obscurantism, dogmatism, sexism, and violence. Many alternatives have been suggested, including "Islamic revivalism," "political Islam," or simply "Islamism." These terms, however, have the drawback of not allowing comparative treatment of a phenomenon common to many religious traditions. Namely, from the 1970s to the present there has been an increased social mobilization and political activism on the basis of religion. Moreover, by equating fundamentalism with political Islam, the alternatives discount another ideological strand that has played an important role in Islamic revivalism, namely, Islamic modernism. So, for the lack of a satisfactory alternative, "Islamic fundamentalism" has been widely adopted in both scholarly and general parlance.

Islamic fundamentalism is found today, in varying degrees of strength and popular support, in every Muslim-majority country and in many countries with large Muslim minorities. Although they do not form a monolithic movement, fundamentalists do share certain common features in both their ideology and their organization. The similarities derive from the fact that most contemporary Islamic fundamentalist groups trace their origins to two organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab countries and the Jama?at-e Islami in the Indian subcontinent. Both emerged during the 1930s and 1940s as responses to the problems confronting Muslims under British imperialism and to the perceived conformism of secular or modernist Muslim elites to European ideas and institutions. Thus, twentieth-century Islamic fundamentalism is in many ways a modern phenomenon, a product of both foreign and indigenous influences. Yet, it is also the latest manifestation of a long tradition of reform and revival movements within Islamic culture. Fundamentalist ideologues often quote the Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) to provide a classical sanction for their ideas. Similarly, Hanbali influences are evident in the Wahhabi fundamentalist movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which had a profound, conservative impact, not only in the Middle East but also in India and Africa. A more direct forerunner of contemporary fundamentalism was the Salafiyya movement led by Jamal al-Din Afghani, Muhammad ?Abduh, and Rashid Rida in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The more liberal spirit of Afghani and ?Abduh animated Islamic modernism, while the more conservative approach of Rida hints at the conservative backlash against modernism that moved Hasan al-Banna? to found the Muslim Brotherhood and Abu l-A?la? Maududi to create the Jama?ate Islami.

Both the Brotherhood and the Jama?at were organized by local chapters, into which members were initiated only after they had been tested for their conviction, piety, and obedience. The local cells answered to a central coordinating committee. The head of the organization was the murshid (guide) or emir (leader), who was assisted by the majlis alshura, an advisory council of senior members. Thus, the organization putatively mirrored the structure of the early Prophetic community in Medina, but it also resembled the Sufi orders whose quietism the fundamentalists rejected.

The ideology of the Jama?at was elaborated primarily through the prolific writings of Maududi. Al-Banna's writings are more limited because of his early death. Sayyid Qutb would become the chief ideologue of the Brotherhood and because of Maududi's influence upon him, the main conduit for propagating Maududi's ideas in the Arab world.

The fundamentalist worldview is premised on the idea that most societies, including nominally Muslim societies, are in a state of jahiliyya, or "ignorance," akin to the jahiliyya that prevailed in Arabia before the advent of the prophet Muhammad's mission. Only a small, committed vanguard of true Muslims discern the corrupted state of Muslim affairs and the proper means to remedy it. Their initial mission is to withdraw mentally and even physically, if need be, from the jahiliyya in order to inculcate truly Islamic values within themselves and their organization. This hijra, or "flight," is the first type of jihad that they must wage. On the instructions of the leader, the Muslim vanguard must transform their inner jihad into an outer jihad aimed at overthrowing the un-Islamic order and correcting societal ills. The details of an authentic Islamic political system are left vaguely defined in most fundamentalist writings. The basic principle of such an order, however, is declared to be hakimiyyat Allah, or the "sovereignty of God." This requires the application of divine law, or shari?a, in all its dimensions. The fundamentalists generally do not feel bound to any one school or to the entire corpus of classical jurisprudence that defined shari?a. They feel empowered to perform ijtihad, that is, to derive law themselves through their own reading of the Qur?an and sunna. Compared to the modernists, who also claim the right to ijtihad, the fundamentalist reading of scriptural sources is far more literal and conservative.

Both Qutb and Maududi castigated those Muslims who renounced forceful means in the jihad to establish an Islamic order. Qutb was executed for his views and the Muslim Brotherhood after his death officially renounced revolutionary violence against the Egyptian state. The Jama?at under Maududi was always a loyal opposition party within Pakistani politics. During the late 1970s, inspired in part by the Islamic revolution in Iran, splinter groups consisting of a younger generation of activists broke off from the two older parties to form new, much more violent groups. One of these groups, Islamic Jihad, assassinated Anwar Sadat in October 1981. Other spin-offs are at the forefront of violent struggles in such diverse parts of the Muslim world as Algeria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Indonesia. It should be noted, though, that one of the most widespread and important fundamentalist organizations, the Tablighi Jama?at, is not only nonviolent in its tactics, it generally eschews politics altogether.

Shi?ite fundamentalism differs from Sunni fundamentalism in a few particulars, mainly in the greater millenarian emphasis that results from Shi?ite expectations of the return of the Hidden Imam, the greater emphasis upon shahada, or "martyrdom" in jihad, and the theory of the direct rule of the Shi?ite religious scholars as enunciated by Ruhollah Khomeini in the doctrine of velayat-e faqih. Yet, in most other ideological aspects and in organization, Shi?ite fundamentalist groups can hardly be distinguished from Sunni groups. Greater interaction and mutual influences are evident, for example, in the upsurge in suicide attacks by Sunni groups, a tactic pioneered by the Shi?ite Hizb Allah in Lebanon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choueiri, Youssef M. Islamic Fundamentalism. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

Euben, Roxanne L. Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Marty, Martin E., and Appleby, R. Scott, eds. Fundamentalism Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Roy, Olivier. The Failure of Political Islam. Translated by Carol Volk. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Sivan, Emmanuel. Radical Islam. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.

Sohail H. Hashmi

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World