The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder [Paperback]

Bassam Tibi (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520236904 | ISBN-13: 978-0520236905 | Publication Date: August 5, 2002 | Edition: 1

Long before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Islamic fundamentalism was exerting a significant influence in nearly every corner of the world. Bassam Tibi, a widely recognized expert on Islam and Arab culture, offers an important and disquieting analysis of this particular synthesis of religion and politics. A Muslim and descendant of a famous Damascene Islamic scholar family, Tibi sees Islamic fundamentalism as the result of Islam's confrontation with modernity and not only--as it is widely believed--economic adversity. The movement is unprecedented in Islamic history and parallels the inability of Islamic nation-states to integrate into the new world secular order.
For this updated edition, Tibi has written a new preface and lengthy introduction addressing Islamic fundamentalism in light of and since September 11.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the global fragmentation that has emerged from the end of the Cold War, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to provoke a "new world disorder," Tibi argues. A professor of international relations at the University of Gottingen, Germany, Tibi take great pains to point out the differences between Islamic spiritual faith, which he maintains poses no threat, and Islamic fundamentalism, which he views as a primarily political response to Western dominance. The fundamentalist revolt, he explains, targets not just Western political power but Western culture and value as well. Tibi makes a strong and urgent argument that this rejection of the West contributes to a global balkanization that must be addressed as we enter the 21st century. Islamic fundamentalism challenges the Western-based notion of a world order of nation-states because Islam rejects such boundaries and claims its own place as the legitimate organizing force of the world. Tibi contends that the prevailing approach in international relations of dismissing Islamic rhetoric because it poses no real military threat to the West misses the point that fundamentalist activists exacerbate cultural divisions that seriously threaten peace everywhere. No less than a clarion call to address what Tibi argues are deteriorating world relations before it's too late, this book urges political and religious leaders to foster cultural and religious tolerance among the world's religions.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Fundamentalism is generally viewed as a reemergent traditional religion expressing itself in the wider society through rigid politics. Tibi, a professor of international relations at the University of Gottingen and the author of several books on modern Arab history and politic, sees Islamic fundamentalism as a modern totalitarian political movement that makes selective use of popular religious devotion. Explaining that all major religions can be used for such tight social control, Tibi argues that Islamic fundamentalism, inherently violent and repressive, creates social disorder and is a sort of communism in ecclesiastical garb. This highly informed and technical work, aimed at historians and political scientists, rewards careful study. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with substantial collections in religion or modern politics.?James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (August 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520236904
• ISBN-13: 978-0520236905
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In-depth analysis that looks at reality, not the sensational, December 3, 2000

By 

"abede" (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Hardcover)

I actually read this book (or main essays therefrom) in German. (The author teaches at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, and I believe publishes in that language) Having grown up in the Middle-East, I found Prof. Tibi's description of both events and realities on the ground to be very faithful to the truth. The very satisfying thing about his writing is his scientific-neutral (with a twist of anthropology, economics as well as just plain common sense) approach. There are countless books out there written by Arab "scholars" and "I've been there and understand it all" western journalists who more often than not just highlight one fact without showing interdependence of economic conditions, sociological stratification and cultural alienation that help explain the mess brought about by the rapid introduction of modernity into a world that heretofore had a limited sense of nationhood, let alone a secular societal organization.

Bassam Tibi has this very rare objectivity due to not having the inferiority complex vis-a-vis the "West" which unfortunately plagues most if not all Arab and Middle-Eastern academia.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Answers to Post 9/11 Questions, October 30, 2005

By 

Thomas J. Tucker (Birmingham, Al United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Hardcover)

This brilliant and prescient volume (written in 1997) belongs in the library of anyone interested in military history or world affairs as well as general academic circulation. It should be mandatory reading for anyone in Western government. It's one of the most important books written about the turmoil in our world today. A non-academic, I found it a revelation. Questions about the silence of the non-violent, "moderate" Muslims receive tentative answers in these pages. It also deals with the widespread fundamental movement within Islam of which the terrorists compose only a tiny percentage. It sets the historical framework for the acceptance of Islamic fundamentalism, in its many imperfect forms, as a reaction to the foolish post WWI decision of the French and British foreign offices in dividing the Arabic Middle East into arbitrary nation-states. They were never accepted by many Muslims who regarded them as an irrevelent impostion by the West. As a Muslim, Tibi demonstrates great courage in detailing the inherent inconsistences in Islamic fundamentalism thought as well as its lack of historical grounding in traditional Islam. He places Islamic fundamentalism in the political arena. Nothing is more potent than religion coupled to political drive for change. He's careful to point out there are many fundamental movements worldwide that have nothing to do with Islam. I've just touched the surface of the many important points Tibi raises.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important works on Islamic Fundamentalism from Westerners, October 7, 2007

By 

Sage107 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Hardcover)

The fact that this book was written several years before 9/11 tells wonders to how deep the problem with Islamism (i.e Islamic extreminism/fundamentalism) was throughout the globe well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As a U.S. student of international relations, this was one of the first books that exposed me to the problem of Islamic fundamentalism and I am glad it was the primer. I have gone on to read other books and I am just astonished by the disinformation and as well the misinformation presented by authors claiming to interpret the inner psyche of fundamentalists. What disturbs me the most about other authors is that most do no even read or write and Arabic. In turn, they rely on translations by others which could be easily misconstrued from a difficult dialect such as Arabic and the style and prose of Quranic verses.

Professor Tibi, on the other hand, does not suffer from this pathology. Aside from being able to speak and write fluently in Arabic, Professor Tibi is an Arab as well as a devout Muslim - a moderate one at that. Furthermore, Professor Tibi has actually traveled all over the world, into some of the most violent and volatile regional hotbeds to experience first hand the problem with Islamic fundamentalism. To understand the roots the problem, I believe one cannot sit in the comfort of Washington, D.C. think tanks or American universities: the dimensional problems associated with Islamic fundamentalism require proactive engagement. But thankfully, most readers and students will not have to experience such hardship because of Professor. Tibi's work.

It would be difficult to do justice to Professor Tibi works in such a short review. Having said that, here are three important points I felt are worthy of notice. First, Prof. Tibi contends that Islamic fundamentalism is not at war with the West, but at war with secular nation-states. He contends convincingly that the concept of the nation-state is foreign to Islam. He cites several passages from the Quran that support this contention and goes on to explain how such an political arrangement - often advocated by the West - is incompatible with current understanding of Islam by followers. Second, he strongly advocates that Islamic fundamentalism (he refers to it as Islamism as well) as a pure political apparatus to undermine the apologists of the nation-state. He does this by showing the contradictions between the interpretations of fundamentalist teachings and works to that of the Quran. By following this methodology, Professor Tibi lays out the framework for Islam as the peaceful religion and its rogue opposite (Islamism) which twists the teachings in the Quran to sanction terrorism as means to its political ends. Third, he discusses the West's inability to escapes its "Orientalism" when it comes to interpreting and understanding Islamic fundamentalism. Orientalism implies the Western perspective of old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of other cultures and peoples. In other words, an ethnocentric bias to which the West consistently interprets the events of fundamentalism. He believes that as long as the West continues viewing the problem of fundamentalism through this prism, the problem will continue perhaps perpetually.

Needless to say this book really expanded my "horizons" on this contentious subject. Considering that I am not Arab, Islamic, or born in the Middle East, I think what I appreciated most about this book is how the entire discourse is underpinned in peace studies from an individual that fills all three of these voids. Such an approach ultimately advocates a pragmatic solution to the problem with Islamism and helps preserve Islam as a spiritual faith.