Islamic Fundamentalism: Causes, Rise and Impact on Middle Eastern Politics

Running head: ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
Islamic Fundamentalism
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1ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
The term Islamic Fundamentalism has become prevalent by the western media. In
order to understand the fundamentalism is very necessary to define it at first. The Islamic
fundamentalism refers to the religious movement or the view-point that is characterised by a
return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles and often by the
intolerance of the other views and opposition to secularism. This Islamic Fundamentalism has
begun in the last 1500 to 200 years in the 1400 years of the existence of Islam1. However, it is
also to note that the Islamic Fundamentalism has nothing to do with Islam religion, it is just
one of the means of using the name of Islam for their own agendas. This paper is going to
elaborate on the causes and rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, particularly in the Middle
Eastern politics.
The basis of support for the thorough Islamic fundamentalism cannot be discovered in
the religious doctrine2. Instead, it could only be found in the social condition of the very
region. There was a very deep resentment among the Arab masses towards the oil industries
and companies which extracted huge profits while the ones who did the work could not even
feed their children. The government of the United States also has a long history of exploiting
and dominating the resources and people of the Middle East. Regardless of such a
tremendous oppression, the ruling elites as well as the capitalists of the Arab refused to stand
up to the United State imperialism. Most of the Arab ruling elites were the clients of the
United State imperialism and they subserviently followed the orders of the Washington’s 3.
For example, the Mubarak’s Egypt did not challenge the support of Washington’s for the
Israel as because of the fact that billion dollars of Washington annual bribe.
1 Flower, Scott. "Islam and Papua New Guinea: growth in context." In Islam and Cultural
Change in Papua New Guinea, (2016): pp. 28-39.
2 Eickelman, Dale F. "Trans-state Islam and security." In Transnational Religion and Fading
States, (2018): pp. 27-46.
3 Petras, James. "Imperial Counter-Offensive: Challenges and Opportunities."
In Globalization and Antiglobalization, (2017): pp. 47-62.

2ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
In order to break the stranglehold of imperialism, it was very important to cancel all
the foreign debts and to nationalise the giant multinationals which were at that time
exploiting the resources and the people of the region. As because of the fact that the ruling
capitalists and the elites would not be willing to take those steps since then, the responsibility
had then fallen on the poor peasants and the working class. They in actual, used to be very
strong and powerful communist and socialist parties in most of the countries of the Middle
East region which fought against the oppression and poverty. There used to be many attempts
by the Arab masses for overthrowing the concept of capitalism. Some of the best example of
it to note is that in Iraq in the year 1959, In Syria and Algeria in the year 1960, in Iran in the
year 1979 etc4. However, each of the opportunities was entirely misused and wasted by the
secular nationalist of Arab as well as by the Stalinist Communist Parties that have then
subordinated the struggles of the peasants and workers to the interests of the Arab capitalists
and the Soviet foreign policy. During the collapsing of the Stalinist states in the year 1989 to
1991, the communist parties started disintegrating. They had then looked to all these regimes
as some of their model of socialism. Finally, the defeat of the communism as well as the
failure of the left in delivering on its promises have then confused many of the people and led
them to look for other available solutions and into this vacuum, the right-wing Islamic
extremists then stepped in. While they were then still one of the minority groups. They have
significantly grown in influence. The suffering of the people in Arab on the US and in the
rich kings of Arab as well as the dictators who had then collaborated with the US
imperialism, they have all been able to tap into the emerging anger in the society5. Some of
the key factors to mention in this context are the relations and links to the traditional rules,
4 Taji-Farouki, Suha. "Islamic state theories and contemporary realities." In Islamic
Fundamentalism, (2018): pp. 35-50.
5 Sukarieh, Mayssoun. "The Rise of the Arab Youth Paradigm: A Critical Analysis of the
Arab Human Development Report 2016." Middle East-Topics & Arguments 9 (2017): 70-83.