Islamic Religious Fundamentalism, Essay Example

Maalouf’s Account of the Causes of Islamic Religious Fundamentalism

In Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, the author broaches the issue of the logic and the causes of Islamic fundamentalism by posing a prima facie paradoxical question that contrasts Western and Muslim societies: “Why has the Christian West, which has a long tradition of intolerance and has always found it difficult to coexist with the “Other”, produced societies that respect freedom of expression, whereas the Muslim world, which has long practiced coexistence, now looks like a stronghold of fanaticism?” (Maalouf, 59) In this remark Maalouf already acknowledges what he perceives to be a phenomenon of fanaticism present in the Muslim world; moreover, this phenomenon becomes all the more difficult to account for when it is contrasted with Maalouf’s reading of the historical pasts of the Occidental and the Islamic worlds respectively: it would appear that the two societies have exchanged their values of fanaticism and coexistence. Maalouf’s account of the causes of Islamic fundamentalism is tied directly to this paradoxical question: Maalouf seeks to delineate how this inversion happened, and as such, with an account of this inversion in place, he will attempt to trace the etiology of Islamic fundamentalism.

Whereas Maalouf acknowledges the existence of Islam fundamentalism, he nonetheless believes that such a fundamentalism must be separated from the Islamic faith itself. This thesis is already alluded to in the remark concerning Islam’s historical emphasis on coexistence. In other words, Maalouf suggests that something must have happened within the Islamic world, which forced this change. This is intimated in Maalouf’s following remark: “I have made it clear that I don’t subscribe to the opinion, so widely held in the West, that conveniently sees the Muslim religion as the source of all evils afflicting Muslims societies.” (Maalouf, 60) Thus, Maalouf’s initial gesture here is to draw a distinction between fanaticism and Islam: if there is a fanaticism, or a tendency towards the latter within the Muslim world, it is circumstantial that this fanaticism exists within the Muslim world, Islam is not to be construed as the necessary cause of such a fanaticism. Accordingly, Maalouf writes, “it does seem to me that the influence of religion on people is often exaggerated, while the influence of people on religion is neglected.” (Maalouf, 60) If there is such a phenomenon of fanaticism in the Muslim world, this must be accounted for in terms of individuals within the Muslim world, that is, societies, which happen to have Islam as their chief religion. As such, there is nothing in the word of the Koran that supports an ideology of fanaticism, but it is rather the appropriation of the Koran on a particular individual or societal level that can engender such fanaticisms.

This thought points toward what may construed as Maalouf’s central thesis in regards to the problem of Muslim fanaticism: “In the Muslim world, too, society has always produced a religion in its own image.” (Maalouf, 62) Hence, Maalouf notes that it is not always religions that determine the structure and organization of a particular society, but it is society that determines how religion is employed. In essence, religion is an apparatus that is a particular part of society– religion is radically malleable and is readily manipulated by various societal forces.

But what were the particular changes in the societal life of the Muslim world that led to the shift away from coexistence towards fanaticism? Maalouf suggests that this shift is a certain instance of Muslim self-reflexivity concerning the meaning of Islamic identity, combined with Islam’s relation to the non-Islamic world, or in other words, the Islamic “Other.” This notion is intimated in the book, insofar as Maalouf observes that, “when the Arabs were triumphant and felt the world was theirs for the taking, they interpreted their faith in a spirit of tolerance and openness.” (Maalouf, 62) Thus, if Islam suddenly becomes more susceptible to discourses of fanaticism, the logic for this transition is consistent with the very notion that the world is no longer Islam’s for the taking: fanaticism recalls an existential threat to the very possibility of the Islamic world. Maalouf makes this clear in a hypothetical example, in which the “Western Paradise” (Maalouf, 89) of the Occident is available to only the economically privileged members of Muslim society, whereas those who lack such economic prosperity find themselves excluded. As excluded, they become “tempted by Islamism”. (Maalouf, 90) It is according to economical and societal factors, therefore, that Islam becomes a discourse of the excluded, which sets itself in opposition to the privileged discourse of the West. This in turn creates an introverted Islam, one that is forced to internalize its culture according to the threat of West. In essence, Islam must reduce its tolerance to the “Other”, in order to survive in a world largely controlled by Western hegemony.

Hence, the fundamental thesis for Maalouf is that “Islam, like any other religion or doctrine, always bears the marks of time and place.” (Maalouf, 64) If there is an Islamic fanaticism, this has nothing to do with the essence of Islam itself; the history of Islam, in Maalouf’s view, disproves this. Rather, Islamic fanaticism is a particular Islamic discourse that is essentially conditioned by time and place, that is to say, by particular historical and societal factors. Maalouf’s greater thesis holds for all religions: instances of fanaticism must not be ascribed to the doctrine of a religious group, but how this doctrine is both lived and utilized, according to the context of a particular historical epoch. Islamic fanaticism is thus the manifestation of a particular situation constituted by complex relationships of power, hegemony and issues of basic existence between nations and societies,

Works Cited

Maalouf, Amin. In The Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001.