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Origins Of The Term 

The roots of fundamentalism are found in the history of the American millenar­ian movement. In the 1830s and '40s, much excitement was generated in the United States by expectations of the Second Advent of Christ and an ensuing thousand years of peace ("the millennium"). ⁴

 The fundamentalist movement first received its name from a twelve volume series entitled ‘The Fundamentals’ which began publication in 1909. From this developed a list of five basic fundamentals of the Christian religion which included:

    1. The inspiration and infallibility of Scripture.
    2. The deity of Christ (including His virgin birth).
    3. The substitutionary atonement of Christ’s death.
    4. The literal resurrection of Christ from the dead.
    5. The literal return of Christ in the Second Advent.

 Family Characteristics Of Fundamentalism

 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences funded a multiyear project that brought scholars from around the world together to study Fundamentalism. They produced 5 volumes containing almost 8,000 pages of material. The last chapter of volume 1, Fundamentalisms Observed, discusses the "family resemblances" found in the various chapters.

 These family resemblances include:

1. Religious idealism as basis for personal and communal identity;

2. Fundamentalists understand truth to be revealed and unified;

3. It is intentionally scandalous;

4. Fundamentalists envision themselves as part of a cosmic struggle;

5. They seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in light of this cosmic struggle;

6. They demonize their opposition and are reactionary;

7. Fundamentalists are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage they stress;

8. They are led by males;

9. They envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the distribution of power. ⁵

 According to William O. Beeman four qualities of the fundamentalist movements are: revivalism; orthodoxy; evangelism; and social action.  ⁶

Describing the basic characteristics of revivalist movements Samuel Hungtington observes:

The movements for religious revival arc antisecular, antiuniversal, and, ex­cept in their Christian manifestations, anti-Western. They also arc opposed to the relativism, egotism, and consumerism associated with what Bruce B. Law­rence has termed "modernism" as distinct from "modernity." By and large they do not reject urbanization, industrialization, development, capitalism, science, and technology, and what these imply for the organization of society. ⁷

Modern use of the term

 There are different terms used in the western media islamists, extremists, terrorists, rdiclas, reformists etc.The term fundamentalism is also used in a variety of manner.

 In Wikipedia the net encyclopedia it is stated:

The phrase Islamic fundamentalism is used in the West to describe Islamist groups many of which are opposed to liberal movements within Islam……It describes a variety of religious movements and groups in Muslim communities which may be entirely apolitical. An example is the Tablighi Jamaat……It describes Muslim groups which advocate Islam as a political movement, especially Islamism, which advocate the replacement of state secular laws with Islamic law. ⁸

Olivier Roy the author of The Failure of Political Islam, states that “Islamism” is the brand of modern political Islamic fundamentalism, which claims to recreate a true Islamic society, not simply by imposing the Shariat, but by establishing first an Islamic state through political action. Islamists see Islam not as a mere religion, but as a political ideology, which should be integrated into all aspects of society (politics, law, economy, social justice, foreign policy, etc.). The traditional idea of Islam as an all-encompassing religion is extended to the complexity of a modern society. In fact they acknowledge the modernity of the society in terms of education, technology, changes in family structure, and so forth. ⁹

Hungtington equates Islamic "fundamentalism with political Islam:

'It is a broad intellectual, cultural, social, and political movement prevalent through­out the Islamic world. 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 rededication to Islam by Muslim populations. The Resurgence is mainstream not extremist, pervasive not isolated. ¹⁰

 The Rand corporation report by the title Civil democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies distinguishes two strands witin within fundamentalism: Scriptural fundamentalists and radical fundamentalists. According to the researcher Scriptural fundamentalism is grounded in theology and tends to have some roots in one or another kind of religious establishment, On the Shi’a side, this group includes most of the Iranian revolutionaries and, as one Sunni manifestation, the Saudi-based Wahhabis.

 The radical fundamentalists as the report says are much less concerned with the literal substance of Islam, with which they take considerable liberties either deliberately or because of ignorance of orthodox Islamic doctrine. They usuallydo not have any “institutional” religious affiliations but tend to be eclectic and autodidactic in their knowledge of Islam. Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Hizbut-Tahrir, and a large number of other Islamic radical movements and diffuse groups worldwide belong to this category. ¹¹

 There is a great diversity among Muslim fundamentalist groups. Mumtaz Ahmad notes that both Jamaat-i-Islami and Tablighi Jamaat are fundamentalist movements in view of their literalist interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna and in view of their common hostility toward, and reaction against, Islamic liberalism and their shared dedication to restore pristine Islam. Although there is a vast difference between there strategies as the Jamaat-i-Islami is dedicated to the resacralization of political life and the establishment of an Islamic state with the Qur'an and Sunna as its constitution and the Shari'a as its basic law; the Tabligh movement is dedicated to the moral and spiritual renewal of individual believers, expected to fulfill their religious obligations even in the absence of an Islamic state. ¹²

 Choueiri in his book Islamic fundamentalism mentioned that the direct meaning of the term is assumed to indicate a certain intellectual stance that claims to derive political principles from a timeless, divine text. He stated that three separate movements are identified and studied within this convenient framework:

 Revivalism, reformism and radicalism. ¹³

 It is my considered opinion that we consider fundamentalism as the idea that it is not enough to practice Islam in the personal life, but that the teachings of the Qur´an and those of the Sunnah need also be implemented in their totality in the social, economic, and political fields. In other words, it implies the establishment of the sovereignty of Almighty Allah (SWT) in the "religious" as well as the "secular" domains, or the removal of the dichotomy between collective life and state authority on the one hand and Divine guidance on the other.

 For example according to a well-known contemporary scholar:

 The essence of Islamic Revolutionary Thought consists of the idea that it is not enough to practice Islam in the personal life, but that the teachings of the Qur´an and those of the Sunnah need also be implemented in their totality in the social, economic, and political fields. In other words, it implies the establishment of the soverignty of Almighty Allah (SWT) in the "religious" as well as the "secular" domains, or the removal of the dichotomy between collective life and state authority on the one hand and Divine guidance on the other. ¹⁴

 Now in our remaining paper we will use the term “Islamic Fundamentalism” in a positive manner for the persons and movements who seek to restore the original teachings of the Qur'an and Sunna and to re-create the socioreligious system established under the direct guidance of the Prophet and his first four successors  “the rightly guided caliphs”.

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