Islam in Germany - Institut für Islamfragen

Islamic Fundamentalism - Definitions and Relevance
Following the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center
in New-York, there is a growing public
interest in Islamic „fundamentalism”
as the breeding ground of contemporary
international terrorism. For opinion formers
and the media in the secular West,
where religion has been eliminated from
the public sphere and relegated to the
private area of free moral choices, it is
difficult to understand how people „in
this day and age” are willing to kill and
be killed for their religious convictions.
Of course not all Muslims are fundamentalists,
and not all fundamentalists
are violent radicals! While fundamentalists
are a minority in most Muslim societies
and states (some experts estimate
10% of any given Muslim population),
their vehement discourse has had a major
impact on the Muslim world, filling the
vacuum left by the failure of secular
regimes and ideas. A radical extremist
minority of fundamentalists is responsible
for the violence and terrorism of the
last decades which has been aimed at
Muslim regimes as well as at Western
societies and states.
Fundamentalists do express some
deeply felt beliefs and grievances common
to most Muslims, so their influence
is much larger than mere numbers would
suggest. They give expression to the
deeply felt anger of many Muslims
around the world that is fuelled by Muslim
weakness, Western hegemony, and
the failure of secular regimes and their
various ideologies (liberalism, socialism,
and nationalism). Perceived Muslim
10
I.
Dr. David Zeidan
dependency and humiliation result in a
rage against the West and especially its
leading superpower the United States, as
well as in bizarre conspiracy theories that
see the „Crusading Christian West” and
Judaism as the main enemies of Islam,
always and everywhere bent on its destruction.
II.
Islamic Fundamentalism (also known as
Islamism or political Islam) is part of this
wider reform movement, a reaction to the
destructive effects of secular modernity
and Western hegemony on Muslim societies.
For Western Christians it is helpful to
remember the Reformation period in the
history of Christianity in Europe. At that
time, social unrest and the invention of
the printing press combined to create
movements criticizing the corruption of
established religion and demanding radical
reform of the church. Tragically, this
religious movement for reform was linked
to incredible violence as Church
leaders, Kings and nobles manipulated
religious concepts for their political
goals. The persecution of dissidents
(heretics) and the long religious wars
devastated large regions of Europe and
resulted in the death of a significant proportion
of its inhabitants.
A similar upheaval is happening
among Muslims today who face the crises
caused by the effects of colonialism
and modernity: dependence, population
explosion, urbanisation, industrialisation,
extreme poverty and the overwhelming