: moufid Bitar, Ruba Mansour
The religious awakening of recent decades has been accompanied by a relatively widespread proliferation fundamentalist movements. These movements were not, as some imagine, the product of an external conspiracy, but rather the result of a structural flaw in the minds of these societies. They are the product of a culture founded on a particular reading of the single, yet multifaceted religious text (Islam is both one and multifaceted)
The awakening of fundamentalism is not due to its intellectual strength and past record of success, but rather to the failure of its opposing force, namely the nationalist forces, which rode the emasculated Arabism starting in the 1950s. Arabism failed to achieve a society of justice, democracy, and progress, and its failure created a vacuum that would have logically been filled with something better. As a result of the assassination of forces that could have been an alternative to Arabism, fundamentalism advanced the program of the greatest failure, known under the name “Islam is the solution.” Thus, the region developed according to the rules of Arab development backward, that is, from bad to worse.
The cultural counterpart to the political also developed according to a method from bad to worse. Instead of an alternative culture promising success, a culture of failure emerged. It is no wonder that a culture rooted in religion became active in societies where religion constitutes one of their basic components. The marginal, shallow, superstitious religious culture was unable to dominate the scene alone, so it united with the remnants of Arab nationalism, forming a quota-based authority based on the principle of “whatever can and whatever is needed.” Religious culture gave the authority its religious legitimacy, and Arabism retained a portion of its privileges, thus achieving what Aflaq said: “Arabism is Islam, and Islam is Arabism.” The alliance of Arabism-Islam and Islam-Arabism led the country for nearly a century and brought the entire region to the situation we see today, represented by complete collapse on all levels and fronts. The various and diverse fundamentalist forces can be called activist Islam, embracing a multitude of currents and groups that differ from one another in many ways. Some are armed, others unarmed, some have been slaughtered, and others have not yet been slaughtered, but could be slaughtered at any time. The intellectual background is the same for all of them, represented by the comprehensive view of religion as a program of salvation in this world and the hereafter. Salvation on earth is mostly political, and is represented by the establishment of a religious state, regardless of whether it is a caliphate or an imamate.
Since the active Islam is comprehensive, this active Islam had to interfere in the affairs of life from small to large. It had to interfere in inventing slogans, including that crises are the result of distancing from religion, including also the consecration of the inferiority of women and the depreciation of their value, as we have learned about this point on many occasions, including making it difficult for women to work outside the home, and not making them equal to men, then the lack of necessity of educating them, as Sheikh Al-Huwaini demanded, then the emphasis on establishing memorization schools and religious institutes, then the consecration of hostility to Western civilization accompanied by the consecration of asylum to the West and the defense of the presence of millions in the West, then inciting these refugees to practice isolation, seclusion, hostility to the rule of law, shirking of practices related to democratic life, and denying the diversity that their presence in the West created, as if they imagined the Islamization of nearly 800 million Westerners overnight, who did not notice that with their asylum, parasitism, poverty, and backwardness they do not represent a role model for anyone. Why would Europe convert to Islam when Europeans saw and experienced what Arab Islam did to Arab Muslims? Is their model of life,is destiny, backwardness, and violence a role model for anyone
It is important to understand activist Islam a the objective factors that led to its revival in local societies, then to understand the essence of the causal relationship between the crisis in these societies and the political-religious conditions these peoples have been experiencing for a long time. Active Islam is not a solution to any problem; rather, it is one of the manifestations and expressions of a colossal problem. Active Islam isisrepresents a backward, catastrophic escalation. The mere imagining of the Islam of the Taliban,and the Islam of isis is alarming