forged from formative revelatory experiences long ago (Sidahmed and Ehteshami,
1996: 5).
Although fundamentalists hark back to a past that they seek to re-enact, this
past is heavily doctored with mythology. The retrieval by fundamentalists (as pointed
out in the above definition) is ‘selective’ and ‘innovatory’. Tariq Ali comments that
fundamentalist Islamists chart a route to the past that mercifully for the people of
the seventh century never existed (2002: 304). This is why it cannot be said that
all Muslims are fundamentalists. The leaders of fundamentalist movements are not
theologians, but social thinkers and political activists.
It is often assumed that fundamentalists are genuinely concerned with resurrecting
the fundamentals of a religious system. Hiro speaks of Islamic fundamentalists as
releasing Islam from scholastic cobwebs and ideas imbibed from the West (1988:
1–2), but this, in our view, is not so. Fundamentalists are not conservatives trying
to recover old truths. They want to remould the world in the light of doctrines that
are quite new. Take the view that the regime in Saudi Arabia has of the Islamic
religion. It can certainly be described as extremely conservative, but it is not
fundamentalist. On the contrary, the gap between the wealthy few and the majority
of salaried Saudis has been exploited by fundamentalist forces. It would be more
accurate to say that conservative governments like the regime in Saudi Arabia have
provoked fundamentalism, rather than being fundamentalist itself. The fact that the
royal family is pragmatic in its domestic and foreign policy and adopts a Western
outlook and behaviour, instigates the growth of fundamentalist tendencies as a
reaction to it (Nehme, 1998: 277, 284).
Of course, terminology differs. Roy makes a distinction between an Islamism
that is willing to get involved in social and political action in revolutionary fashion
and a ‘neo-fundamentalism’ that is concerned simply with religious teaching (1999:
36). What Roy calls Islamists, we call fundamentalists, and it is for this reason that
we identify Islamic fundamentalism, for example, as a militant and anti-modernist
movement that exploits Islam rather than seeking to defend its basic tenets. Muslims
in general oppose violence and militancy: the Islamic University of Gaza may want
people to return ‘to our basics’ (Jensen, 1998: 203), but it is not fundamentalist.
Fundamentalists, as we define them, may claim a respect for fundamentals, but we
should not overlook the cynicism, demagoguism (i.e. liberties taken with logic and
reason) and ‘selective retrieval’ involved in their activity.Modernity and tradition
Ali describes religious fundamentalism as a product of modernity (2002: ix), and
yet, as will become evident later, it is hostile to modernity. This is true of all
fundamentalisms, whether religious or secular. As Kepel points out, Christian
fundamentalists seek not to modernise Christianity but to Christianise modernity,
just as Islamic fundamentalists seek, he says, to ‘Islamize modernity’ (1994: 66, 2).
Fundamentalism is best described (forgive the seeming paradox) as a modern
movement opposed to modernity. Fundamentalism is a product of modernisation- urban and intellectual in character. Fundamentalists use modern methods of
propagating their ideas and recruiting adherents: what they attack are the
Chapter 17 Fundamentalism 383