What is Islamic fundamentalism?
It is widely held that fundamentalism is a ‘green threat’ in the post-cold war world.
The Islamic religion is seen as the new enemy to democracy, the USA and the West- a cancer destroying ‘Western’ values. However, to conflate the Islamic religion
with fundamentalism is itself a fundamentalist distortion of reality, intended to
project all conflicts as a war either by or against Islam, some kind of resurrection
of the Crusades. It is a view held by the Christian right and extreme Zionists, and
it involves a dramatic and unwarranted homogenising of Islam.
As Ali points out in his revealingly entitled The Clash of Fundamentalisms, the
world of Islam has not been monolithic for thousands of years. The social and
cultural differences between Senegalese, Chinese, Indonesian, Arab and South Asian
Muslims are far greater than similarities they share with non-Muslim members of
the same nationality (Ali, 2002: 274). Roy even argues that Islamism has ‘social-
democratized’ itself (1999: xi). A comparison between Zoubir’s (1998) analysis of
Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria and Robinson’s (1998) assessment of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Jordan demonstrates not only the diversity within Islam, but the
necessary features which make up an Islamic fundamentalism.
Following the successful liberation war with France, the state in Algeria, Zoubir
points out, lost its legitimacy and its raison d’êtrein the eyes of a youthful and
disenchanted population (1998: 132). Little was done to provide employment or
housing for the young people who deserted the countryside for the shanty towns.
The Algerian regime offered modernisation without secularisation, with a demagogic
and equivocal position on religious and cultural issues. It was, and still is, corrupt
and inefficient, and this has led to an identity crisis with disastrous consequences - an identity crisis which has been intensified by the defeat of Arab nationalism
and the humiliations suffered by Arab regimes against Israel (Zoubir, 1998: 133).
Many mosques were built in Algeria and were it not for their totalitarian conception,
the fundamentalists could have provided the basis of a credible counter-hegemony
programme along classic Gramscian lines. Whereas the Italian Marxist Gramsci
urged the construction of a working-class hegemony of intellectual and moral
supremacy based upon socialist values, fundamentalists in Algeria have sought an
illiberal and anti-democratic domination. Many of the individuals who followed
Nasser or Marx in the 1960s are fundamentalists today. Chaotic liberalisation of
trade, and a cut in food subsidies and unemployment have all fed fundamentalism.
Large segments of society have been marginalised, leading to widespread anger,
despair, banditry and utter hatred towards the state and its clienteles (Zoubir,
1998: 139).
Robinson’s study of Muslim brethren in Jordan and their party the Islamic Action
Front (formed in 1992 when parties were legalised), is a study of Islamists who are
not fundamentalists, since, as Robinson points out, these organisations express their
opposition to secularism in democratically permissible ways (1998: 173). A leader
of the Muslim Brethren says: ‘we have never believed in violence or intellectual
terrorism’ (Robinson, 1998: 182), but as it becomes more working class in
composition and Palestinian influence increases, the Islamic Action Front has become
increasingly divided (Robinson, 1998: 189). If inequalities continue to grow and
the crisis in Israel/Palestine worsens, then this Islamic movement may turn to
Chapter 17 Fundamentalism 387