Fundamentalism

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This chapter is taken from the book “Dangerous Concepts”

The first time the term fundamentalism appeared was in Europe towards the end of the 19th Century. It was used to indicate the position of the Church regarding the new sciences and philosophies and the strict adherence to the Christian faith.

The Protestant movement is considered the basis of fundamentalism. It set out its fundamental principles in the Conference of Niagara in 1878, and in the General Presbyterian Conference of 1910, where the basic principles of fundamentalism were crystallised. They were established on principles of Christian beliefs that contradicted the scientific progress being made by the Capitalist ideology, established on the creed of separating religion from life.

Though this movement disappeared with the Second World War, it was implanted in the minds of Europeans that fundamentalism was an enemy to progress and science. It was considered intellectual backwardness not compatible with the age of awakening, and it had to be fought until its effects were removed from society and life.

Thus, fundamentalism emerged in Europe as a reaction to scientific and industrial progress that came after the separation of Christianity from life’s affairs. It emerged because of the inability of Christianity to respond to the new systems of life, which are derived from the Capitalist creed, the creed of separating religion from life. This pushed the believers in the Christian faith to adopt a stance rejecting the various forms of material progress and Capitalist culture. However, this movement, fundamentalism, failed and disappeared due to its inability to present practical solutions for life’s problems, and because of the reason for its establishment, i.e. the resistance to scientific progress, and those disciplines and thoughts which the Christians did not agree with or believe in.

Hence the source of describing certain Christian and Jewish movements as fundamentalist is the West. It is a reference to religious movements that oppose the technological, industrial and scientific progress that occurred after the application of the Capitalist ideology. In western view fundamentalism means backwardness and reactionism, and it means opposing scientific and industrial advancement.

Simply describing a specific group as fundamentalist is sufficient to consider such a movement a danger to the modern materialist Hadharah and to people’s lives. This justifies taking necessary measures, however harsh, to oppose it. When a state, like Egypt or Algeria, executes Muslims for being fundamentalists, this action is greeted with the support of the Western public opinion. No human rights organizations rise against that because those executed people -according to their claimare fundamentalists. They are seen as enemies of humanity, especially when all of the ugliest acts are attributed to them, such as the mass slaughter of innocent people in Algeria and the killing of tourists and Copts in Egypt.

The description of fundamentalism exceeded its original term to include every movement and party that works to change the current terrible lives of the Muslims to an Islamic life by re-estabilising the Khilafah and ruling by Islam. It also includes every movement that opposes the aggressors and usurpers of Islamic land and their rights such as the Jews, Serbs, Americans and others. So, the Muslim Mujahids who fight their enemies who usurp their land are fundamentalists and terrorists. Those who also die as martyrs by striking the aggressor foreign forces are suicidal and criminals!

This description is dangerous to every Muslim and every movement fighting injustice and occupation. It is dangerous to every party working according to the Shari’ah methodology to resume the Islamic way of life. This is because the aim of this description is to create legal justifications to attack anyone calling for the re-establishment of Islam in life’s affairs, under the pretext that Islam is a fundamentalist movement, like Jewish and Christian fundamentalist movements who fought industrial and scientific progress in the age of the Capitalist revival. The selection of this term to brand the Islamic movements with is because of its historical relevance to Western public opinion, so that the people of the West stand behind their rulers in the face of the return of political Islam as a state and system of life.

It should not occur to the mind of any Muslim that the description of Islamic movements as fundamentalist is taken from their connection with the foundation of the Deen or the foundations of jurisprudence (Fiqh). The foundation of the Islamic ‘Aqeedah is belief in Allah, His Angels, Books, Messengers, the Day of Judgement and al-Qadar. The foundations of jurisprudence are the principles on which jurisprudence is based, which the Mujtahid uses to derive practical Shara’i rules from their detailed evidences.

Fundamentalism, according to Western terminology, which the Christian Protestant movement brought together with the aim for which the movement was founded, has no connection with Islamic concepts and Islamic movements whether contemporary or historical. In Islamic history, political movements, intellectual schools and jurisprudence schools have appeared. However, they do not resemble the Christian fundamentalist movements in any way whatsoever. Even those who called for the closing of the door of Ijtihad in the seventh Century Hijrah did so not because they wanted to preserve the old and oppose the new. Rather because they thought that the Islamic Fiqh generated by the predecessors (Salaf) contained all the issues that the later scholars (Khalaf) might possibly face.

Islam is a unique Deen that differs from other divine religions, in that it is the final message and abrogates the ones that came before. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala has taken the responsibility of preserving it as it was revealed until the Day of Judgement.

He (Subhanahu wa Ta’ala) said:

“Verily It is We Who have sent down the Zikr (Qur’an) and surely, We will guard it.” [Al-Hijr: 9]

It is a complete and comprehensive ideology established on a creed based on the human mind, from which emanates a comprehensive system that solves all man’s affairs until the Day of Judgement. It cannot be imagined this ideology is unable to give a Shara’i rule to any problem faced by man. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala said:

“And We have sent down to you this Book (the Qur’an) as an exposition of everything.” [An-Nahl: 89]

The scientific and industrial progress experienced by the Islamic world in the past was a result of the total application of Islam and not of separating Islam from life. Much of the scientific and industrial progress being experienced by the world today is due to those Muslim scholars who set out many of its theories and basic laws in the shade of Islamic life and the Islamic State.

Therefore, to describe Islam and Islamic movements as fundamentalist, in the manner in which Christian movements were described, is erroneous and a biased description. It does not apply to the reality of Islam, or on anyone who works for the return of Islam to life. This is because he is striving to change the miserable reality in which the Muslims live, which has come about from the rule of man-made systems in life’s affairs. This is contrary to the work of Christian fundamentalist movements, which came to preserve the reality in which the Christians lived before Capitalism, in form and content.

So, the West’s description of Islamic movements as being fundamentalist is nothing but a war against the return of Islam as a comprehensive system. It is a strategic, even a vital issue for the West. They are intent on keeping the Third World, especially the Islamic world, backward and distant from any true revival. This is to prevent the reestablishment of the Khilaafah that will uproot their system and put an end to their ambitions and greed.

Listen to the testimony of one of these people; he is a visiting scholar at the Harvard University for Middle Eastern studies. He submitted a report to the US Congress in which he said: ‘Fundamentalists take the view that the Shari’ah should be applied in all its details and that the orders and prohibitions of God must be implemented completely, and that it is binding on all Muslims. Islam is the basic source of their strength and the Shari’ah is suitable for application today as it was suitable for application in the past.’ He also said: ‘Fundamentalists deeply hate Western civilisation, they see it as the greatest obstacle in the face of the application of Islamic Law.’ The American scholar John Esposito, in a report submitted also to the American Congress stated: ‘Those who most threaten American interests are the Muslim fundamentalists.’

So, the fundamentalism attacked by the Kuffar is the reapplication of Islamic Shari’ah in life. If this is fundamentalism then the Muslims, in their view, are all fundamentalists. This is because with yearning and zeal, the Muslims wait for the total application of all the Islamic rules under the shadow of the Khilaafah, to save them and the world from the misery of Capitalism and take them to the glory of Islam. Allah said:

“And who does more wrong than the one who invents a lie against Allah, while he is being invited to Islam? And Allah guides not the people who are unjust (Zalimoon). They wish to put out the Light of Allah (Islam) with their mouths. But Allah will complete His Light even though the disbelievers hate it.” [As-Saff: 7-8]