Is Religious Fundamentalism Always Totalitarian and Prone to Violence?

Fundamentalism is a strict adherence to a set of ideas or beliefs that are conservative in nature. It is a pejorative term usually associated with religious fanaticism. Usually, this is what comes to mind when there is mention of a fundamentalist. However, in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist starring the protagonist Changez, a Pakistani Princetonian who is a top-ranked employee at a prestigious New York valuation firm, turns out not to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but a reluctant fundamentalist of US Capitalism. Hamid challenges readers to reevaluate their preconceived notions and prejudices of people different from themselves in post 9/11 America by employing the use of motifs, aphorism, and suspense, to create a conflation

Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by the most wanted terrorist in America, Osama Bin Laden, to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Invasion. Al Qaeda works with allied Islamic extremist groups to take over regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and remove Westerners from Muslin countries. The organization first began with three members and now there are approximately 200 to 1,000 current members. Al-Qaeda began to construct and offer training camps and guesthouses to its recruits; while they also attempted to pull in U.S. citizens for financial, communication, and operation reasons for the benefit of Al-Qaeda and its other affiliations. By 1990 Al-Qaeda was providing military and intelligence training in various areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Sudan.

11 AUGUST 1988 Al-Qaeda is formed at a meeting attended by Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Dr Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan. The creation of the group brings together extraordinary Saudi wealth, the expertise of a lifetime Egyptian militant, and a philosophical foundation for jihad from a Cairo intellectual. 26 FEBRUARY 1993 The scale of the organisation's ambition becomes clear when they launch an audacious attack on the World Trade Centre in New York - six are killed and 1,000 injured when a 500kg bomb is detonated. JUNE 2001 Bin Laden's al-Qaeda group and Zawahiri's al-Jihad group formally merge. 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 2,974 people are killed as hijacked planes are flown into buildings in America. OCTOBER 2001 US troops invade Afghanistan, committed to ousting the Taliban from power.A history of terror: Al-Qaeda

This paper will talk about the largest terror group called Al Qaeda. Stating the facts on when this terror group formed, their motives, and graphs on numerous innocent lives. The most notorious Islamic terrorist group is Al Qaeda. Its pioneer, Osama Bin Laden, issued a fatwa (a religious decision) in February 1998 requiring an overall Islamic sacred war to slaughter Christians and Jews. Laden's key targets seem to be U.S. property. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist group that was established by Osama Bin Laden in the late 1980s. It started as a strategic system to help Muslims in Afghanistan battling against what was then the Soviet Union amid the Afghan War. Individuals were enrolled all through the Islamic world standing Al-Qaeda's roots and connections.

Al Qaeda believes in this thing called “The Oppressors” Meaning “The one who oppresses others should fear Allah and beware of transgression, because it will be counted as multiples of transgressions on the Day of Resurrection: one for him disobeying Allah, another for him oppressing his fellow Muslim, and a third for initiating and opening the gate of transgression and oppression for others to imitate. The wronged person could even eventually die as a result of the oppression, and the transgressor would bear the consequences of this.” (IslamWeb, Apr 2013, Ph.1) Al Qaeda basically believes if you are not with them, then you are against them meaning you support the oppressor. Al Qaeda has been and always will continue to attempt to create a revolution of the uprising of the oppressed through the masses of messages and threats. Religion is Al Qaeda’s main go to for any reasoning behind their violence. Goals and Objectives always seem to be based on the currently leader of Al Qaeda. Like mentioned previously, Osama Bin Laden was Al Qaeda’s last known leader and he was killed on May 22, 2011 in Pakistan. After being a huge wanted target for the United States of America for nearly a decade long, it has almost been about 5 years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated him during a night-raid on a compound in Pakistan. “President Barack Obama, who monitored the raid in real

Al Qaeda is arguably the most well-known and most dangerous Islamic terrorist organization in the world. It was established around 1990 by a Saudi millionaire, Osama Bin Laden, to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. The goal of the organization is to reestablish the Muslim state throughout the world. Al Qaeda works with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and remove Westerners from Muslin countries. Groups affiliated with Al Qaeda have conducted numerous bombings and other violent attacks throughout the world that have resulted in the

Al-Qaeda grew from the Service Office founded in 1980 lead by the infamous Osama bin Laden. This was an office that was tasked with destroying Muslim brigade that stood in the way of the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan. However, Laden did not want to stop after this task. He began to train and recruit warriors from over 20 countries. With these fighters, Bin Laden planned to carry the holy war past Afghanistan. This lead to the creation on Al-Qaeda in 1988. The group was focused on removing western influence from Muslim theocracy and create strict Islamic governments.

Religion is a very important factor that plays a key role in the radicalization of an

Both authors believes that the fundamentalists within the religion, are upset at the change that has caused the Islamic countries to change economic and socially. But where both authors differ is in where the issue comes from. Miller believes the fundamentalists have a problem with the West, While Zee belives that it is the Reformist who are really threatening the fundamentalists. Zee suggests that this is not a conflict between the West and Islam, but rather between Islam and itself. It is a Clash within a culture, clash between the reformists and the fundamentalists.[ Zee , 12] Unlike fundamentalists, reformist believe that change needs to come both politically and socially. But social and especially political change results in theological change.[ Zee, 14] This is something that the fundamentalists are absolutely against. Thus the clash between the reformist who want the Muslim countries to change, and the the fundamentalists who want it to stay the same existed. . The reformist believe that some Western social and government trend are needed in their countries. But to put these changes into action, there needs to be a change in the theology of Islamic country as well. This is where the main conflict between the two sides lie. As stated by Zee, fundamentalists are completely against the notion of changing their old way of living. This type of conflict is nothing new, and many of the major religions have gone through it. A good prime example of this would be the conflict that the Catholics and the protestants had. Which engulfed a whole continent into almost thirty years of war. This battle inside the culture is what is really hurting Islam according to Zee

The treatise is divided into eight assessable chapters. Chapters one through three focus on stating the problem and causes of the social disconnect of fundamentalism that gave rise to what Henry sees as fundamentalism's uneasy conscience. Chapters four and five focus on a theological resolution and basis for a fundamentalist reengagement of culture. Chapters six through eight are taken up with Henry's proposal of how the fundamentalist principles might be practically applied to global ills. In the first section, Henry locates the cause of the uneasy conscience in the average fundamentalist's indifference to the social implications of his or her religious message. Henry does not see this as a result of theological misstep; he states clearly

People too commonly forget that the story of Al-Qaeda is very much the story of Osama Bin Laden: so much of the development and evolution of Al-Qaeda truly is dependent on this one man. Thus, this means that their narratives are forever intertwined. "The primary founder of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was born in July 1957, the seventeenth of twenty sons of a Saudi construction magnate of Yemeni origin. Many Saudis are conservative Sunni Muslims, and bin Laden appears to have adopted militant Islamist views while studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia" (Katzman, 2005).

Al-Qaeda was founded by Osama Bin Laden, and Abdullah Azzam, both Mujahideen fighters. The group focused its effort on the United States after the United State’s occupation of Saudi Arabia to support the country, and the US’s support of Israel. This was seen as an insult as they were in the land of the two mosques, Mecca and Medina. The terror group had laid out a fatwa in 1998 that highlighted why they wanted kill Americans, and the call to all Muslims to do the same. The terrorist group had taken responsibility for the 1998 U.S Embassy bombings killing 224. The October 2000 bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole killing 17 servicemen. Their successful plots embolden their strategy, and their leaders decided to bring to bring the fight to

There are several terrorist groups throughout the world today. All the terrorist groups have one common goal and that is to rid the world of Americans and western influence from the Muslim world. There is one organization that has ties to most of all the terrorist groups in the world and is the most infamous group in the world today and that is the group called Al-Qaeda The word Al-Qaeda means “the base” in Muslim. As an international terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden. The group seeks to rid Muslim countries of western influence and replace them with fundamentalist Islamic regimes. Al-Qaeda grew out of the of the ashes of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1988, after it helped expel the Soviet

Al Qaeda is a global organization founded by Osama Bin Laden. It is one of the most powerful and rich terrorist organizations in the world. The group is responsible for major attacks such as September 11th and many other bombings. Through the years Al Qaeda has transformed from a terrorist organization into a fighting group. It is now something known as jihadist networks. These networks of Al Qaeda are so powerful and can be seen as a global threat because of their worldwide supporters, financial means and their access to weapons.

In today’s generation, the term fundamentalism is regularly utilized to portray political or religious organizations that individuals promote a strict understanding of their establishing archives or blessed writings. Some however not those gatherings look to supplant