Islamic fundamentalism and traditional religious values

Islamic Fundamentalism

The rise of religious fundamentalism in the last 25 years can be linked to resistance to a rapidly evolving society. The world has seen more innovation and change in the last quarter of a century than in almost all of history. The widespread use of the personal computer has changed the face of the world, ushering in widespread technological, social, and economic changes, which have the possibility of creating a global society. However, not everyone benefits from a global society. The traditional balance of power begins to shift when the disparity in resource access begins to disappear. This notion can be very threatening and can prompt a rise in fundamentalist behavior, whether religious or merely sociological.

To understand the rise of fundamentalist Islam, one must first understand some of the basic aspects of Islam. Islam does dictate the social separation of the sexes and gives men and women different roles to play in the religion. Islam also lends itself to theocracies, because good Muslims are expected to live their religions. With its requirements of multiple daily prayers and other highly ritualized behaviors, Islam is also a very traditional religion, and cultural norms that have developed alongside the religion can be mistaken for religious requirements. All of these factors combine to make Muslims vulnerable to fundamentalism in the face of looming change.

However, it would be dishonest to suggest that outside factors have not pushed Muslims towards extremism. Afghanistan, which was the site of the most totalitarian of the Islamic extremist groups, the Taliban, provides a wonderful case study for how outside intervention can fuel extremism. The United States and the Soviet Union used Afghanistan to jockey for position against each other after the official conclusion of the Cold War. Because the two superpowers were officially at peace, they did not actually declare was against one another. Instead, the United States engaged in covert operations against the Soviet Union using Afghani mujahedeen to fight their battles. The U.S. supplied the Afghans and Pakistan with weapons, funds, and training to fight against their enemies. However, after years of covert support and both explicit and implied promises to help with reconstruction efforts, the U.S. abruptly pulled funding from the area, leaving many former allies feeling abandoned and as if they had been misled. Many of these disenchanted warriors formed the backbone of the Taliban.

These initial members were able to prey upon the poverty that plagued Afghanistan and Pakistan and recruit numbers of young males for Islamic extremism. This was due to the fact that both countries suffered from extreme poverty and were not able to fund schools for young males. Both the Taliban and Al Qaeda built radical madrasahs offering boys an education. Since families saw the education of their children, especially their sons, as the primary way to escape from crippling poverty, they would send their sons to the madrasahs for an education. In the madrasahs, the children were steeped in Islamic fundamentalism. Part of the education focused on the resource disparity between people in the U.S. And other western countries and these children. While they were used to the absolute poverty in which they lived, this education and the emerging globalization that made it possible for them to learn about life outside of their isolated rural areas made them aware of the degree of their relative poverty.