It took nearly six years for Mohsin Hamid to finish the book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. After the book was published, Hamid’s profound thinking on September 11 Attack, the border conflict between India and Pakistan, and the cultural conflict between the East and the West, has made a great impact in the western countries. First, we should know about fundamentalism, since it is the main topic we would like to discuss about here. Fundamentalism is a concept in many religions around the world. It refers to some certain religious groups which try to return to their original beliefs, or make it strictly abiding to the basic principles of their religion by some collective movements.
The fundamentalists believe that the liberal theology that emerged in the religions in modern times has made their beliefs secularized and deviated from the essence of their beliefs. They generally advocated literal and traditional interpretations of the basic scriptures or documents of their religions, and believe that the doctrines gained from these interpretations should be applied to all aspects of social, economic, and political life. Fundamentalism exists not only in Islam, though it is discussed in the book, but in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and some other religions.
Among all of the religions, fundamentalism has become the most important trend of thoughts in the Islamic world today, compared with any other mainstream religions in the world, and is widely supported in many Islamic worlds. Many Muslims believe that the modern world is affected by secularization and westernization, and is not in line with their beliefs. Therefore, the Islamic fundamentalists try to return to the original state of their beliefs and strictly manage their personal and social life according to the Koran. Moreover, as many of the Arab terrorists generally had islamic fundamentalist religious backgrounds, fundamentalism started to have a negative meaning.
The Iranian hostage crisis was a turning point of the term, fundamentalism. The western media tried to explain ruholrah Mousavi Khomeini’s ideology and the Islamic revolution in Iran to the audience; therefore, the media described it as “Islamic fundamentalism”, similar to the “Christian fundamentalism” in the United States, and after that, “Islamic fundamentalism” has become a common term for subsequent use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00285/full
Thank you for this informative context presentation on the meaning of fundamentalism. Having background knowledge on the concept really helps the reader to understand Changez’s thoughts throughout the novel. I enjoyed your inclusion of how the concept of fundamentalism has been twisted over the years. This really highlights the prevalence of miscommunication from culture to culture.
We touched on this topic briefly in Persepolis and it is refreshing to have a more explicit explanation about the term and how it has been used and changed. This explanation helps to objectively portray the ideas and concepts we have discussed and will discuss
Thank you for your insight on fundamentalism! I didn’t know that fundamentalists advocated for literal and traditional interpretations of their religion. I found it interesting that fundamentalism exists in many other religions besides Islam and therefore we should not only portray one religion as being fundamentalist. I think this shows that it is important to have an accurate understanding of fundamentalism and post modernism to better understand other peoples perspectives about the world and how it can relate to systemic injustices.