Islamic fundamentalism

Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a revivalist and reform movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. The term has been used interchangeably with similar terms such as Islamism, Islamic revivalism, Qutbism, Islamic activism, and has been criticized as pejorative.

Some of the beliefs attributed to Islamic fundamentalists are that the primary sources of Islam (the Quran, Hadith, and Sunnah), should be interpreted in a literal and originalist way; that corrupting non-Islamic influences should be eliminated from every part of Muslims' lives; and that the societies, economies, and governance of Muslim-majority countries should return to the fundamentals of Islam, the system of Islam, and become Islamic states.

The term fundamentalism has been deemed misleading by those who suggest that all mainstream Muslims believe in the literal divine origin and perfection of the Quran and are therefore "fundamentalists", and others who believe it is a term that is used by outsiders in order to describe perceived trends within Islam. A professor of religious studies at Georgetown University, John L. Esposito, criticized the usage of the term "Islamic Fundamentalism" due to its ambiguous nature; asserting that the linguistic deployment of the term has been heavily influenced through Western-centric lens of Christian presuppositions. According to him, the more appropriate terms would be "Islamic revivalism" and "Islamic activism", since the traditions of Tajdid (revival) and Islah (reform) are rooted within the Islamic religious history, from the early Islamic centuries to the contemporary times. During the 1990s, the post-Soviet states used "Islamic fundamentalism" as a synonym for "Wahhabism".

Some 20th century preachers and writers sometimes dubbed Islamic fundamentalist include Sayyid Qutb, Ibn Saud, Abul Ala Mawdudi, and Israr Ahmed. The Wahhabi movement and its funding by Saudi Arabia is often described as being responsible for the popularity of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism.

Definitions vary as to what Islamic fundamentalism exactly is and how it differs from Islamism (or political Islam) or Islamic revivalism.

...didn't hesitate to attend Hindu ceremonies. Khomeini never proposed giving Iranian Christians and Jews the status of dhimmi (protected communities) as provided for in the sharia: the Armenians of Iran have remained Iranian citizens, are required to perform military service and pay the same taxes as Muslims, and have the right to vote (with separate electoral colleges). Similarly, the Afghan Jamaat, in its statutes, has declared it legal to employ non-Muslims as experts in the eyes of Islam.

According to Roy distinctions between Fundamentalism and Islamism (or at least pre-1990 Islamism) are in the fields of:

Historian Ervand Abrahamian (who essentially devoted a book—Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic—to why Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, was not a fundamentalist but a populist, and calls the term "Islamic fundamentalism" in general "not only confusing but also misleading and even downright wrong"), notes that in the Islamic Republic of Iran, supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini "finding no equivalent in Persian or Arabic" for fundamentalist, "have proudly coined a new word, bonyadegar, by translating literally the English term fundamental-ist."