On the Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism

• In Event: Religion and Public Opinion: Comparative Perspectives on Political Attitudes and Beliefs

Abstract

Are there meaningful similarities between Islamic fundamentalism and other universal ideologies such as communism, socialism, liberalism, fascism, feminism, or Christian fundamentalism? Between 1979 and 1991 Marxist scholars, such as Fred Halliday and Maxime Rodinson, argued that Islamic fundamentalism was an archaic form of fascism.[1] Conservative-leaning scholars in that period, tended to see similarities between Islamic fundamentalism and communism. In the mid to late 1990s, neo-conservative scholars tended to argue that Islamic fundamentalism had similarities with fascism.[2] Such comparisons were extremely brief and tended to constitute only a paragraph or two.

Although there exists a vast literature on Islamic fundamentalist regimes (Islamic Republic of Iran, Taliban, HAMAS) and groups (al Qaeda, ISIS, PIJ, Hezbollah), there are only a few scholarly works dealing with the nature of Islamic fundamentalism.[3]

In this paper, I present an in-depth analysis of the nature of Islamic fundamentalism. This research is at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations, political theory, area studies, and Iranian studies. It discusses the ideological foundations of Islamic fundamentalism and its views on the international system as well as the social bases of the fundamentalist regime in Iran and its actual domestic policies.



1. Masoud Kazemzadeh, Mass Protests in Iran: From Resistance to Overthrow (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023).
2. Masoud Kazemzadeh, “Teaching the Politics of Islamic Fundamentalism,” PS: Political Science and Politics, vol. 31, no. 1 (1998): 52-59.
3. Mehdi Mozaffari, Islamism: A New Totalitarianism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2017).

Author

• Masoud Kazemzadeh, Sam Houston State University