Islamic "fundamentalism": The mission creep of an American religious metaphor

Abstract

In this article I examine the work of the earliest scholars to identify "fundamentalism" among Muslims and highlight debates over the cross-cultural usefulness of the Protestant label. I focus on renowned orientalists who used the metaphor to describe the differences among Muslims long before American liberals popularized it by applying it to the Iranian Revolution. These scholars applied the term to Islam to justify a larger narrative about the nature of religion and its relationship to universal history. Although this progress narrative, reliant on Hegelian idealism and dialectics derived from Christian templates, is rarely reiterated now, its binary image of Muslims (rabid fundamentalists versus enlightened liberal mystics) has become dominant. By naturalizing the use of the metaphor in Muslim contexts, the scholars I discuss helped foster the idea that fundamentalism occurs in all traditions and set the terms for contemporary narratives in which religious explanations for conflict elide political and economic issues.