Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism: What do Muslim Fundamentalists Believe?
Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism: What do Muslim Fundamentalists Believe? Friday September 29, 2006 It’s common to see people talk about or reference Muslim fundamentalism or fundamentalist Islam, but what do these terms mean? Fundamentalism was originally coined in reference to a strain of traditionalist Christianity in America and can’t be transferred to other religions without careful definition and explanation. In the February, 1990 issue of Political Quarterly, Tariq Modood writes: The term fundamentalism originally arose to describe the literalist attitude of certain American Protestant sects to the Bible. As such, it cannot be directly transposed on to Muslims for the vast majority of Muslims, including those in Britain, are Sunnis who, incidentally, owe no allegiance whatsoever to Shiite Ayatollahs, and who, unlike the Shia, take all passages in the Quran literally rather than metaphorically. I understand fundamentalism in Sunni Islam to consist of the following beliefs: (i) to
