Islam in the modern world, lecture 5: fundamentalism

“Fundamentalism”: never used by Islamic people but by westerners, used for a group of Muslims. Nowadays we used Islamism, militant Islam, and terrorism. One response to colonization. These Muslims started this movement in the name of Islam revival, but at the beginning they could not succeed because of the rise of nationalism. These new states that emerged in the name of nationalism were secular. Secularism is a western idea. However, in the secular Muslim world, no tolerance, democracy was never totally achieved. = Secularism with corrupt spirit. Arab countries developed to their economy as the west did, but the group, which ruled the country became richer and the masses did not contribute. The democracy in the Arab countries was not the democracy in the West. Communist parties were very strong among the masses. But with the collapse of USSR, because it failed, and nationalism failed, people started listening to them.

First organization of this nature in Egypt March1928: The Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan el Banna (1906-1949), the Sayyed Qutb (1906-1966): he thought that he had to bring back Islam to the Muslim who have forgotten Islamic values, by politics. It used to be a social organization. Qutb starting organizing coups d’état, so he was put in gale and then executed by Nasser.

2nd organization: Jamaat-e-Islami, founded in 1941, by Abul A’ala Maududi (1903-1979), he wrote a book on Jihad. He was critical about liberalism because brought by the colonizers, but communism denied God, so he gave the title of ideology to Islam. Maududi did not believed in violence, very inspired by Gandhi. He wanted to educated people, peacefully, because imposing Islam will create dictators, and people will not agree with Islam anymore. He wanted to people to accept Islam by education. So he went to Pakistan. But in 1977, they made a huge mistake. The only elected PM of Pakistan (father of Benazir Bhutto) was arrested