The movement is inherently incapable of realising its messianic vision.

For the past 50 years, Arab secularism has been on the decline. If any one event triggered this decline, and the subsequent rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world, it would be the Six-Day War in 1967.

By the mid-1970s, Egyptian fundamentalists had carried out a spate of sporadic terrorist attacks that caught the attention of the West, which at the time was still focused on the threat of communism.

The end of the Soviet-Afghan War in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later, brought Islamic militancy to the fore as a significant threat to world peace. In carrying out the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the series of explosions in London in 2005, al-Qaida arrogated to itself the right to target the West in the name of Islam.

But as a regressive and anachronistic phenomenon, Islamic fundamentalism is inherently incapable of realising its messianic vision.

The Road to Islamic Fundamentalism

The slogans of the French Revolution had a significant influence on the intellectuals of the Arab Awakening era, which lasted from the 19th century until the outbreak of the Second World War. European policy after the First World War weakened the cause of Arab liberalism and led to the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism. It also paved the way for the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, a movement that proved to be pivotal in reshaping the Islamic world, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. The decline of Arab liberalism was in part due to the British refusal to create an Arab state in Syria, despite having previously pledged to do so.

Rashid Rida, an influential Islamic thinker, was a follower of key 19th-century reformers like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu, whose liberal teachings promoted a version of Islam that would be compatible with the requirements of modernity. Rida wholeheartedly supported the establishment of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1919 and its adoption of a secular constitution that did not declare Islam the official religion of the state and promised to usher in a pluralistic democracy. But the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which recognized the French mandate over Syria, shifted Rida’s stance; he stopped promoting secularism and adopted Wahhabi Salafism, a movement that helped usher in the concept of political Islam, which in turn inspired Hasan al-Banna to found the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood’s ideologue whom Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered hanged in 1966, published in 1964 a book titled “Milestones,” which laid out the intellectual foundations of militant Islamic movements over the past half century. Qutb argued that, if Islam were to succeed, it would need to wage a war against the West and spread Muslim religious and cultural values globally, a development he saw as inevitable. According to Qutb, the West was morally bankrupt and unable to offer a functional value system for humanity. Fundamentalist scholars like Qutb believe that Islam is the solution and identify three stages of religious transformation – mercy, worship and knowledge – that eventually caused the rise of contemporary militant jihadism. As violent as it might sound, jihad is crucial in meeting the ultimate goal of Islam: to spread the word of Allah. The first significant wave of fundamentalist jihadism occurred in Egypt during the 1990s before spreading elsewhere and becoming transnational.

Fundamentalism as a Variation of Fascism

There are striking similarities between Islamic fundamentalism and totalitarian movements such as Nazism and fascism. Both aspire to retrieve past glories and reclaim lost empires or found new ones. Fascists believe in the cultural and moral superiority of their race, and they see themselves as promoters of a mission that advances the interests of disadvantaged peoples and, therefore, as having privileges that others do not. They pursue an expansionist territorial strategy that continues to unfold as long as they are winning.

In 1938, al-Banna argued that every practicing Muslim has the duty to protect every other Muslim, just as the German Reich saw itself as the protector of everyone who has German blood. Al-Banna added that if Mussolini thought he was entitled to resurrect the glory of the Roman Empire, then Muslims had the right to restore the greatness of the Islamic Empire and reclaim the Mediterranean and the Red Sea as Islamic lakes.

Whereas fundamentalists in other religions seek to develop religious governments in their own countries, Islamic fundamentalists seek to install a universal political system consistent with their values and in opposition to those of the Western world. The long-standing goal of fundamentalist movements, regardless of their tactics or priorities, is the establishment of a totalitarian and expansionist Islamic state. They advocated revolutionary violence and justified its use on religious grounds, using verses from the Quran to promote a sense of Islamic exclusivity.

Radical Islamists behave like religious fascists. They use savagery and cruelty to force compliance, and spread chaos and anarchy to erode the authority of the state. They declare jihad on the ruling elite, as well as those they see as apostates. Militant movements like the Islamic State, al-Qaida and al-Nusra commit abhorrent acts and apply brutal punishments, without recognizing the elements of repentance and forgiveness that are equally important elements of Islam.

The Limits of Religious Militancy

Islamic fundamentalists have rejected calls for reform; they prefer to look to seventh-century Islamic practices – though they also pair these practices with the use of Western technology.

Islamic fundamentalism is the result of decades of cultural lethargy, intellectual stagnation and failed social and economic policies in many Muslim countries, especially in the Arab world. Religious extremists have distorted the role of political Islam by infusing morality into statebuilding. They politicized faith and made it central to their definition of modernity. For them, modernity means having a state dominated by religion. They seek to suppress opposing viewpoints and use their faith to justify the brutal elimination of their opponents irrespective of their religion. Short of full control of the country, they tend to characterize it as a resurrection of the preIslamic state of paganism that existed in Arabia.

Fundamentalists adhere to strict religious practices that were developed during the early days of Islam. They promote their religious ideology as one that provides thorough explanations and answers for all social phenomena, and justify the use of violence by claiming that it is necessary to protect the sanctity of Islam. By targeting the state, they alienate local populations that view them as the enemy within, as well as their former supporters who have come to see the state as the lesser of two evils.

The Future of Islamic Fundamentalism

Most Muslims no longer have faith that Islamic fundamentalism will deliver a better future. The reform-minded mission of political Islam lost its balance and moral compass when it became obsessed with the resurrection of the caliphate. Islamic fundamentalism is in retreat. Its containment requires the state to see it as more than just a security issue.

In Algeria, for example, the government managed to end the country’s nine-year civil war only after it realized that military means alone would not deliver the desired outcome. It issued amnesty to members of the Armed Islamic Group and the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat who renounced violence, and it introduced major infrastructural projects to create work opportunities for young people in economically depressed parts of the country. Although it still has some ways to go in terms of its political and economic development, leaders in other countries still challenged by fundamentalism can at least benefit from the Algerian experience.

Hilal Khashan is a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. He is an analyst of Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of six books, including “Hizbullah: A Mission to Nowhere”. He is currently writing a book titled “Saudi Arabia: The Dilemma of Political Reform and the Illusion of Economic Development.” https://geopoliticalfutures.com