Islamic Fundamentalism

Sogang University

Graduate School of International Studies

Introduction to International Relations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Islamic Fundamentalism

 

 

 

Ni Evgueniia I31031

Professor Lee, Kyu Young

   

 

 

 

 

Seoul

2012

 

Contest

Introduction

1. Islam as a Religion
2. Islamic Fundamentalism
1. Defining Fundamentalism and the Backgrounds of Islamic Fundamentalism
2. Islamic fundamentalist movements

Conclusion

Bibliography

 

 

Introduction

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and is second only to Christianity in number of adherents. Muslims live in all parts of the world, but the majority of Muslims are concentrated in the Middle East and Asia North Africa, Central Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia. Today, more than a billion people around the world are Muslims. 

                    It is very well known that certain networks have flourished in many countries throughout the world. Small but well-financed militant movements arise, coming against their government and the common people, instigating conflict. The danger lies when an outside government supports such extremist movements under the false impression that this constitutes preserving religious freedom.      

The  terrorist attacks in 1990s, and basically 9/11 contributed, not unreasonably, to the Western perception that all Muslims are anti-American terrorists. Terrorist attacks receive enormous media attention, and most of developed countries peoples base their views of Muslims on the stories they hear on the news. To be sure, most Westerners are unaware of Muslim customs and ideologies, except for what they learn from the media. It is important to acknowledge that not all Muslims are fundamentalists, and not all fundamentalists are terrorists. However, fundamentalism, by its very nature, carries the threat of extremism, and extremism can easily morph into violence. Islamic fundamentalists can therefore pose a terrorist threat to their enemies. Unfortunately, many Middle Easterners perceive America as an enemy. Knowing the principles of Islam is the first step toward understanding how Islamic fundamentalism can lead to terrorism.

The problem of activation of Islamic fundamentalism in many countries at present is becoming increasingly important worldwide. Traditionally, Islamic fundamentalism can be seen as a movement to rid Islam of the side effects. However, now the Islamic funtamentalism increasingly interpreted as interference of religion in the politics of states. Obviously, any active influence of religion on the state can inevitably lead to changes in political and social order, economy, law. One of the main features of Islam is that it is a significant impact on the legal aspect in the state, because it contains a set of legal and moral rules called Shariah, which is replicated by modern Islamic fundamentalists.

The main aim of my term paper is to overview what is Islamic fundamentalism and  what  leads fundamentalists to the extremists. Also I will try to avoid the one-sided view on this problem and look at this problem from the third side. Some people see the problem of Islamic extrimism through the prism of religious conflict between the Islam and Christianity. I`m not a Muslim, neither a Christian, but I was studying all world religious, while doing my undergraduate degree. I really respect Muslims and Islam, the same as I respect Christianity. My point of view is not to judge or critizise, but to understand and  try to analyse and give assumptions of future prespectives of the Islam and  fundamentalist wave. Tryng to avoid the bias in my work, in my bibliography I used several Western, including Russian recourses, and also some Muslim scholars' works as well.

 

 

1. Islam, as a religion

The words Islam or Muslim have been used to describe religion, societies, civilazations, art and architecture, philosophy, history, and political thought. Today, more than 1 billion people call themselves Muslim, and in 52 countries they represent the majority of population. However, most of the world`s Muslims live as minorities in nations throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South Pacific – and the vast majority are non-Arabs who live out side the Middle East. For example, according to  Kathryn M. Coughlin,  Indonesia is home to the world`s largest Muslim population – and, in population terms, it is the fourth- largest country in the world.¹

First of all, let us look what is it Islam as a religion. In our days, often people see Islam as something bad and immidiatly link it to terrorism and  jihad. Islam, especially  after 9/11, and other terrorist attacks in Russia and other countries,  and recent events in the Middle East, was misinterpreted. Many people in Russia, and throughout the world consider Islam as threat of stability, peace and progress, and Muslims - the fanatics, the rich idlers containing harems. A lot of people have a distrust of the Muslims and Islam, fear it, and regard as a terrible threat, in fact without knowing nothing about it. But if we look into the original Islam we can see more than that, the great, smart religion, with good ideals and aims, similar in some way with Christianity. 

Islam  is one of the yongest of the world religions. It was originated in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of VII century. In pre-Islamic time, Arab people  were devided into conflicting between each other tribes, the social and economic gap were very high.  Seeking for uniting the tribes in the Hejaz of Western Arabia, Muhammad (570-632g.), who proclaimed himself as a prophet  founded a community, which has formed the basis of subsequent state organization - the Arab Caliphate.  The prophet Muhammad was a skillful politician, became the head of the state. With remarkable skillfulness he united the various warring clans in an orderly community. Rumors about him were spreading to neighboring countries and from all over Arabia, people began to flock to look at his achievements.   In 632, Muhammad died, in fact, being at that time ruler of all Arabia. He had his own army, police and civil service. So he was the first, who united  all the Arabian people under the one state, using Islam as ideology. A hundred years later his followers conquered Armenia, Persia, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and Spain. They crossed the Pyrenees and invaded France. And if Charles Martel not defeated them in 732, perhaps the entire Western world today would be a Muslim. It was an empire stretching from the Atlantic ocean to Spain to India, the empire. Until now, historians are amazed and can not explain the historical relics brought to life by the advent of Islam. Part of the attractiveness of the new doctrine was its similarity to Eastern Christianity. Islam offers a realistic and practical way to change your life, who can follow simple people.

Islam has two meanings: Peace, and submission to Allah (God). Pious Muslims adhere to the five pillars of Islam: acknowledging that there is no true god except God and that Muhammad is the prophet of God; praying five times a day toward Mecca; giving alms to the poor; fasting during the month of Ramadan (the ninth month of the lunar year); and for those who are financially and physically able, making an annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Islam also requires belief in six articles of faith, which are belief in God, belief in the messengers and prophets of God, belief in the Revelations and the Koran (the Islamic holy book), belief in angels, belief in Judgment Day, and belief in the ultimate power of God or God’s decree. Other precepts of Islam are concerned with matters such as diet, clothing, personal hygiene, business ethics, responsibilities toward parents, spouses, and children, marriage, divorce, inheritance, civil and criminal law, fighting in defense of Islam, relations with non-Muslims, and much more.

Sharia (Islamic law) is integrally connected with Islam and its teachings. According to the Law encyclopedia "Sharia - a set of religious and legal norms, based on the Koran and Sunnah (Islamic sacred traditions), containing norms of the state, inheritance, criminal and matrimonial law.² In other words, Sharia - are legal requirements inherent in Islamic theology, which is closely related to its religious and ideas. Islam considers the legal establishment of a single particle of the divine law and order. Hence, the commands and prohibitions that make up the Shariah, also religious meaning and God`s will. Sharia was developed as a strictly confessional right.  The most important recourse of Islamic law is the holly book of Koran.

The Koran is the foundation of Islam, for religious ceremonies sets, legal and moral norms, lifestyles and rules of behavior for millions of Muslims. Without knowing the Koran, people can not understand the customs and traditions that exist in the world of Islam. The Koran consists of 114 chapters (suras). In addition to the Koran, the Sunnah is a source of faith - stories about the life of Muhammad and his statements in the form of hadith (stories). It is a collection of good practices, traditional establishments, supplementing the Koran and worshiped along as a source of information about what behavior or opinion is pious, faithful. Studying of Sunnah is an important part of religious education. The knowledge of the Sunnah and following it is one of the main criteria for the credibility of the leaders of all the belivers.  Through the Sunnah, the Caliphs was able to organize the life of religious communities and to address many basic issues.  All Muslims follow the Sunnah, except Shiite Muslims.

Currently, Islam is divided into several streams. Most of the Muslims of the world belongs to the Sunnis. In particular, they include about 90% of Muslims in the Middle East. Another major branch of Islam - Shi'a. Especially a lot of Shiites in Iran ( 93%). ³

Sunnis hold them accepted Hadith, religious practices and rules of conduct in all Muslim-life situations, calling this set of sunna ("custom", "example", "direction"). The Shiites are the party (from the word "Shia" - Party), which states that the power in the community should belong only to the descendants of the prophet (that is, the children of Fatima, his daughter, and Ali, his cousin), but not an elected person, as there a Sunni. They do not accept the Sunnah as a whole, complementing its own regulations, which include belief in the special intermediaries between Allah and the Muslims - imams.

So, as we can see Islam is more than just a religion and theology, it is also a political ideology. Here`s a lot of scholars arguring about  pheomenon of Political Islam, or Islamism.  At most general level, adherents of Political Islam believe that ''Islam as a body of faith have something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in contemporary Muslim world and implemented in some fashion''<sup>4</sup>. Another more  precise and analytically more useful definition of Islamism describes it ''as a form of instrumentalization of Islam by individuals, groups and organizations that pursue political objectives. Islamism provides political responses to today`s societal challenges by imagining a future, the foundations for which rest on reappropriated, reinvented concepts borrowed from Islamic tradition.''⁵

           

2. Islamic Fundamentalism
1. Defining Fundamentalism and the Backgrounds of Islamic Fundamentalism

Any definition of fundamentalism is, not surprisingly, highly contested and gives rise to debate. ''Fundamentalism'' literally refers to an early twentieth century American Protestant movement that called for religion based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. So basically, the application of spcifically Western and Christian term to the Islamic world is very contradictionary. Indeed,  there is no word for fundamentalism in Arabic. Many Muslims reject usage of the Western terms “fundamentalism” and “fundamentalist,” instead preferring the terms “Islamism” and “Islamists” when speaking of groups advocating Islamic political law.  Both the Western roots of “fundamentalist” terminology and the extremist perception associated with the term are reason to resist usage of the term.⁶  Nonetheless, “fundamentalism” is now a commonly-used term in describing the ultra-conservative expressions of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish faith groups, among others.  This terminology is useful in that it recognizes, as noted previously, that similarities do exist among ultra-conservative expressions of various faith groups.  In addition, the term is employed across faith groups by a growing number of religious scholars worldwide, scholars who note the differences among faith groups while also recognizing that opposition to modernity is an instrumental, shared element of certain ultra-conservative expressions within a variety of faith groups.⁷

According to Youssef M. Choueiri, whereas this term has an obvious Protestant origin, it was redefined, for lack of a better word, in order to convey a less rigorous connotation. Its direct meaning is assumed to indicate  a certain intellectual stance that claims to derive political principles from timeless, divine text. ⁸  Roxanne L. Euben   refers  ''fundamentalism''  to contemporary religio-political movements that attempt to return to the scriptural foundations of the community, excavating and reinterpreting these foundations for application to the contemporary social and political world.⁹ Samuel P. Huntington argues that ''Islamic 'fundamentalism'', commonly conceived as political Islam, is only one component in the much more extensive revival of Islamic ideas, practices, and rhetoric and the rededictation to Islam by Muslim populations.''¹⁰ 

As a cultural phenomenon, modern fundamentalism is a reaction to modernization and globalization. The impact of the West has been the principle issue facing Muslim peoples since th XVIII cnetury. The Muslim modenizers sought to imitate the West.  It is provoked by a secularization of the liberation of man and society from the influence of the clergy and religious establishments, religious indifference (indifference to religion), the loss of traditional values ​​and a weakening of morals in society. Obviously, the idea of ​​fundamentalism as a return to origins or initial formulas of orthodoxy appears when the doctrine of the religious system, illuminated by theological authority, cease to adequately meet the stage of social development.  

Starting with a general theoretical assumptions of Islamic fundamentalists, let me define their relationship to the original sources of Islam - the Koran and Sunnah, as well as the traditional systems of its interpretation. 

First, the Islamic fundamentalists is characterized by reliance directly on the only truth recourses Koran and Sunnah, which were transformed and wrongly interpreted for the centuries. Thus they proceed from the fact that the Koran is eternal and absolutely true (this is guaranteed by its divine origin), and therefore the standards for all time in its entirety. Second, by focusing on the Koran, many Islamic fundamentalists tend to deny any provisions Scharia that are not built directly by Koran or Sunnah. Some of the ideologues of Islamic extremists do not recognize such classic sources of law, as ijma (consensus of Muslim community). Thirdly, Islam in general, and the Koran and Sunnah in particular, are considered by Islamic fundamentalists as the sole source of all human values, laws, standards, etc. All the concepts, traditions, laws created by human beings, must, from the perspective of Islamic fundamentalists, be discarded.  As a rule they have developed this idea to its logical end, and they come to the conclusion that any arguments related to the people and their interests, clearly irrelevant in the face of Islam, attitudes, respectively, which are elevated to the rank of absolute dogma.¹¹

 

2. Islamic fundamentalist movements

There  three separate movements are identified and studied within the Islamic Fundamentalism: revivalism, reformism and  radicalism. Each movement is treated as a distinct entity with its own historical genesis, socio-economic environment and conceptual frame of reference. Moreover, although all their followers appealed to the Koran in formulating responses to certain questions, their respective appeals issued in different results and interpretations.

              Revivalism denotes Islamic movements that emerged in the XVIII-XIX centuries. It was mainly confined to peripheral areas lying beyond the reach of central authorities, while its social basis had a predominant tribal formation. Moreover, articulated its political outlook in the form of an internal Islamic dialogue . As Youssef M. Choueiri mentions,  there were  clear indications that Islamic revivalism was a reaction against the gradual contraction of internal and external trade, brought about by the mercantile activities of European nations, particularly the Portugese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British and the French. Revivalism echoed to a large extent this 'peripheral' penetration.¹²

One of the first revivalist movements was launched in central Arabia under the guidance of a religious leader and local chief, Ibn Sa'ud and its religous founder Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab. The Wahhabis, believing that modern Islam had become corrupted and polluted from within, were a revivalist movement which sought to return Islam to its pure roots.  In 1766, Wahhab’s doctrinal views won recognition among the scholars of Mecca.  The Wahhabi movement became very influential, leading to the founding of other similar movements.  Properly speaking, the Wahhabi movement was a revivalist movement based on orthodox Islamic law. Ironically, the Wahhabis ideological opposites (the more liberal Sufi expression of the Islamic faith, based on popular spirituality) provided the organizational model for Islamic revivalism.   The Wahhabi movement was one of a number of Islamic revival and reform movements in the eighteenth century. In the twentieth century, Wahhabi Islam would provide the theological foundation for a political fundamentalist state.¹³

There were also  movements in northern India (1831), Nigeria, Sumatra and etc. Two late revivlaist movements were launched in Sudan and Somalia (1899-1920). The shift initially took place through the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (“The Society of Muslim Brothers”) movement in the 1930s.  Although originally based in Egypt, the movement has exercised formidable influence throughout the Arab world.  The Muslim Brotherhood, as R. Hrair Dekmejian notes, “more than any other organization, has been the ideological and institutional epicenter of fundamentalism in the Arab sphere and the Islamic world … it is impossible to comprehend contemporary Sunni Islamism and its Arab manifestations without a firm understanding of the origins and evolution of the brotherhood.”¹⁴

All these revivalist movements shared a common denominator of conceptual and practical characteristics, clustered around the sequental phases of hijra (migration) and jihad (holy struggle).Y.M. Choueiri identifies the following theoretical assumptions:

1. The return to orijinal Islam as the religion the oneness of God;
2. The advocacy of independent reasoning in matters of legal judgments, coupled with an abhorrence of blind imitation;
3. The necessity of fleeing the territories dominated by unbelievers, polytheists and heathens;
4. The fervent belief in one single leader as either the embodiment of the 'renew' and just imam.¹⁵

These movements conducted a purely internal dialogue, centred on the tenets and precriptions of eraly Islam. The revivalist centres of action were often the geographical peripheries. All these puritanical brotherhoods were invariably defeated by either urban political fources processing superior firearms and methods of organization, or by European military. The defeat, slow disintegration and transformation of revivalist currents and political structures constituted opportune moments for the rise and articulation of Islamic reformism.

              Islamic reformism was, by construst, an urban modern  movement which came into being in the wake of European supremacy and expansion. It first emerged in the nineteenth century in the face of external pressure. This particular movement differed from the response of Islamic revivalism to foreign challenges. Its leaders were state officials, intellectuals, or ulama fiercely opposed to tradational interpretations of religion. It conducted an open dialogue with European culture and philosophies in an attempt to grapple with what it perceived to be an intolerable state of Islamic decline. By studying the pre-industrial phase of European civilization, its exponents hoped to discover the prerequisities of building viable political structures and a sound of economic basis.¹⁶ Islamic reformism directed its attention to the plight of Muslims who had lagged behind in the fields of military power, political organization and technological progress. Thus, retardation entered the vocabulary of Muslim reformers and became a historical dilemma rooted in the recent past and intolerable present of the community. Under the impact of internal reforms and European expansionism the territorial empires experienced far reaching changes. Their imperial style and organization shifted in the direction of national political entities advocating notions and norms of citizenship and patriotic allegiances.

               But Islamic reformism did not meet the minimal requirements of a succesfull political movement. It was in the main a cultural and educational reacting seeking, on the one hand, to reinterpret Islam under  the influence of Western capitalism, and inject, on the other, the new interpretations into existing political systems. ¹⁷

               The reforms brought into existence new social groups. Concetrated in modern institutions such as bureaucracies, schools, armies and councils. Moreover, the Islamic world had been gradually integrated into the Western economic system. However the secular modernity did not run smoothly. Muslim modernizers sought to imitate the West, but the performance of the secular state often undermined their vision of modernity. The economic failure deepened the crisis. The rapid population growth and rural-urban migration meant that urban life for most was characterized by poor housing, strained services, and underemployment. In 1950-60ss, secular elites had at least appealed to the masses with socialism and nationalism, but after the infitah (economic reform and opening) model was initiated in Anwar Sadat's Egypt in the 1970s, the the interests, values, and lifestyles of the elites turned towards the West. The elites essentially abandoned the massess, leaving Islam as the voice of opposition not only to the ruling regimes, but also to the culture that came with reforms.¹⁸

                 The intervening phase, preceding  the emergence of Islamic radicalism, was essentially a struggle for independence from colonial rule. And it is primarily seen as a direct reaction to the growth of nation-state and the peculiar problems of the XX century. The crisis of modernization consequenced the Islamic revival in the Middle East, and eventually spread across the entire Muslim world.  Islamic radicalists had many manifestations in Muslim societies -  more men in mosque, and more women in the hijab, but it was newly political militancy that was to have the most dramatic effects. Militan Islam stood in opposition to Western style modernity.  The Iranian revolution  was followed in 1978-9 and led militant Islamism against West. It  provided great impectus to the Islamic revival.