Unit 8 - The New Fundamentalisms

Summary

With the end of the cold war, there emerged a very different sort of division in the world, namely that between the dominant West and the Islamic cultures, which seemed to be bitterly opposed to Western ideas and practices. The opposition between them was highlighted shortly after the cold war ended in some American books and articles and it seemed exaggerated at the time. One view was that the Americans needed to identify enemies since so much of their economy depended on production and sales connected with arms. Still, in the nineteen nineties, it was apparent that on both sides there was bitter hostility.

Such bitterness was quite unexpected because for many years Islam in itself had seemed allied with the West. Hostility developed between the United States and the Islamic countries because many of them had adopted a socialist outlook. This, in the context of the cold war and in view of the dominant economic model in America, seemed threatening. The United States, however, continued to be extremely friendly with the Islamic monarchies, especially Saudi Arabia, which were much more devoted to the religion than the military-socialist regimes such as Egypt, Iraq or Syria.

Development of Islamic Fundamentalism

It was probably in Saudi Arabia that a form of militant Islam developed that was fundamentalist in outlook. It laid great stress on the basic teachings of Islam that made it unique. This also led to the fundamentalists asserting the superiority of Islam over other religions. Whereas elsewhere Islam had blended with the various civilizations it spread through, in Saudi Arabia it had preserved its original form.