Fundamentalism is the belief system in the old and traditional forms of religion or the belief that is written in the holy books such as the Christian Bible or Islamic Quran.
Mr Abdelwahab Meddeb, a French language writer and cultural critic explained the rise of Fundamentalism within Islam. Mr Meddeb divided the answer into two sets of reasons, external and internal.
External causes are familiar: exclusion and non-recognition of Islam by the west, and double standards of the west, especially the USA. However, Mr Meddeb’s enumeration of the internal reason is at once provocative and original. Muslims, he suggests, had for some centuries now lagged behind in the west in technology, innovation and creative spirit. At one time, they illuminated the world with their insights and were givers of these civilisational gifts to the world. They had enjoyed the golden age of their civilization up to 1250 AD.
Now they had become reactive and negative. They had learned to accumulate hatred and were consumed by the idea of revenge. Why was this so? Mr Meddebs laments the loss of doctrinal and interpretative boldness within Islam for this turn of events. Islam had fallen into the hands of semi-literate and culturally illiterate guardians of faiths. It had lost its aristocratic morality, its fascination for the master of learned ignorance ‘.
Mr Meddebs identified the period of the 1920s and 1930s as the decisive phase for the rise of the exclusive, essentially non – discursive and anti-western model of Islam.
To conclude, according to Mr Meddeb, the feeling of guiltiness because of lagging behind the west is reflected in the emergence of Fundamentalism in Islam.
