Islamism is a concept whose meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts. The term can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by Islamic principles or more specifically to movements which call for full implementation of sharia. It is commonly used interchangeably with the terms political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism. In academic usage, the term Islamism does not specify what vision of "Islamic order" or sharia are being advocated, or how their advocates intend to bring them about. In Western mass media it tends to refer to groups whose aim is to establish a sharia-based Islamic state, often with implication of violent tactics and human rights violations, and has acquired connotations of political extremism. In the Muslim world, the term has positive connotations among its proponents.
Jihad is an Arabic word which literally means striving or struggling, especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God's guidance, such as struggle against one's evil inclinations, religious proselytizing, or efforts toward the moral betterment of the ummah, though it is most frequently associated with war. In classical Islamic law, the term refers to armed struggle against unbelievers, while modernist Islamic scholars generally equate military jihad with defensive warfare. In Sufi and pious circles, spiritual and moral jihad has been traditionally emphasized under the name of greater jihad. The term has gained additional attention in recent decades through its use by terrorist groups.
Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a movement of Muslims who regard earlier times favorably and seek to return to the fundamentals of the Islamic religion and live similarly to how the prophet Muhammad and his companions lived. Islamic fundamentalists favor "a literal and originalist interpretation" of the primary sources of Islam, seek to eliminate "corrupting" non-Islamic influences from every part of their lives and see "Islamic fundamentalism" as a pejorative term used by outsiders for Islamic revivalism and Islamic activism.
Liberalism and progressivism within Islam involve professed Muslims who are a considerable body of liberal thought on the original interpretation of Islamic understanding and practice. Their work is sometimes characterized as "progressive Islam" ; some regard progressive Islam and liberal Islam as two distinct movements.
Qutbism is an Islamist ideology developed by Sayyid Qutb, the figurehead of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been described as advancing the extremist jihadist ideology of propagating "offensive jihad" – waging jihad in conquest – or "armed jihad in the advance of Islam"
Tablighi Jamaat is a non-political global Sunni Islamic missionary movement that focuses on urging Muslims to return to primary Sunni Islam, and particularly in matters of ritual, dress, and personal behavior. The organisation is estimated to have between 12 million and 150 million adherents ), and a presence in somewhere between 150 and 200 countries. It has been called "one of the most influential religious movements in 20th century Islam".
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American author, public intellectual, religious studies scholar, producer, and television host. He has written three books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the International Qur'anic Studies Association. He is also a professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside. He is also currently a board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
The Rage and the Pride is a book written in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks by the late Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci. It questions stated tenets of Islam and its practices, condemns totalitarian forces bent on destroying liberal Western society and civilisation, and rails against apathy regarding the immediate threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. Fallaci's book was originally a series of articles written for the national Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The book has been a bestseller in Italy and Europe, where it has sold over 1.5 million copies.
Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West, published in October 2003, is a nonfiction book by Robert Spencer. Spencer described the book as an "in-depth study of the doctrine of jihad and how it is exploited today by terrorists to justify what they’re doing and to recruit and motivate new terrorists".
Mark A. Gabriel, is a lecturer and writer on Islam who lives in the United States. He is the author of five books critical of salafi Islam, including Islam and Terrorism, Islam and the Jews, and Journey into the Mind of an Islamic Terrorist.
Ma'alim fi al-Tariq, also Ma'alim fi'l-tareeq, or Milestones, first published in 1964, is a short book by Egyptian Islamist author Sayyid Qutb in which he lays out a plan and makes a call to action to re-create the Muslim world on strictly Quranic grounds, casting off what Qutb calls Jahiliyyah.
Olivier Roy is a French political scientist, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He has published articles and books on secularisation and Islam including "Global Islam", and The Failure of Political Islam. He is known to have "a different view of radical Islam" than some other experts, seeing it as peripheral, Westernized and part of a radicalized and "virtual" rather than pious and "actual" Muslim community. More recently he has written on the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and the November 2015 Paris attacks.
"Islamic fascism", also known since 1990 as "Islamofascism", is a term drawing an analogy between the ideological characteristics of specific Islamist movements and a broad range of European fascist movements of the early 20th century, neofascist movements, or totalitarianism.
Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam is a 2006 book by Robert Dreyfuss, an American investigative journalist. It discusses how Western governments supported the growth of Islamic fundamentalism for several purposes.
The term "Jihadism" is a 21st-century neologism found in Western languages to describe Islamist militant movements perceived as military movements "rooted in Islam" and "existentially threatening" to the West. It has been described as a "difficult term to define precisely", because it remains a recent neologism with no single, generally accepted meaning. The term "jihadism" first appeared in South Asian media; Western journalists adopted it in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of 2001. It has since been applied to various insurgent and terrorist movements whose ideology is based on the notion of jihad.
Thomas F. Madden is an American historian, a former Chair of the History Department at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, and Director of Saint Louis University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. A specialist on the Crusades, he has often commented in the popular media after the events of September 11, to discuss topics such as how Muslims have viewed the medieval Crusades and their parallels to today's interventions in the Middle East. He has frequently appeared in the media, as a consultant for various programs on the History Channel and National Public Radio. In 2007, he was awarded the Haskins Medal from the Medieval Academy of America, for his book Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, also a "Book of the Month" selection by the BBC History magazine. In 2012, he was named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Secularism has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and understood as equivalent to irreligion or antireligion.
Sayyid Qutb Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, he was convicted of plotting the assassination of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and was executed by hanging.
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is a book by best-selling author Karen Armstrong published in 2000 by Knopf/HarperCollins which the New York Times described as "one of the most penetrating, readable, and prescient accounts to date of the rise of the fundamentalist movements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam". The Battle for God traces the history of the rise of fundamentalism in the three major monotheistic faiths. Armstrong's analysis starts with developments in Judaism and traces it through the creation of fundamentalism in Christianity to adoption of a similar approach to modernity in Islam.
Secularism is one of the four fundamental principles according to the original 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh. The secularism principle was removed from the constitution in 1977 by Ziaur Rahman, replaced with a statement of "absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah", and Islam was declared the state religion in 1988. In 2010, the Bangladesh Supreme Court restored secularism as one of the basic tenets of the constitution but Islam remained the state religion. Over 90% of Bangladeshis are Muslims, the rest being Hindus 8%, Buddhists 1%, Christians 0.9%, and others 0.1%. People in Bangladesh observe various secular festivals at different times throughout the year. The ethos of secularism in South Asia is in many ways different from that of Western versions that assert complete separation of church and state. Rather, it is the freedom of individuals to practice the faith he or she desires without being subject to any form of state or communal discrimination.
