Other sources and citations

Accompanying Opinion 23, “Fundamentalism” and “Be Aware of Political Fundamentalism in the East and in the West”

The order is chronological. 

1 May 2001, Jan Meulemeesters & Karin Armstrong, ‘Fundamentalism is due to fear ’, WD

The famous British authoress Karen Armstrong of ‘The Battle for God’ advises taking fundamentalism seriously. Combating or ridiculing it works aversely, according to her important advice.

“Nowadays the term fundamentalism is mainly used for Muslims, but the phenomenon appears in almost all religions. It is a warlike reaction of fear against the modern world, a struggle for the preservation of traditional values.” 

According to Belgian professor Lieve Troch, women are often the first victims of fundamentalism. “If male supremacy is being threatened by the modern external world, the man tries to restore it in his internal world, family, and home. On the one hand the mother is burdened with an almost sacred role within the home and on feeding; on the other hand she is seen as a monster, source of all possible (sexual) evil.” 

A leader of one of the 3000 new religious movements in Japan said: “Men are superior and women are the cause of all calamity in the world.”

29 September 2001, Yoeri Albrecht and Harm Ede Botje, ‘Why many Muslims hate America’, VN

The Arabist Hans Hansen of the University of Leiden […] emphasises that Muslims, just as for example the Christians, view themselves as superior in relation to other religions. ‘Muslims also believe that everything that is non-Islamic is not allowed. The Islamic state is better than any other. In the Qur’an it is always written that God assures the believers triumph.’

“There is an important difference between Orthodoxs and Fundamentalists. The former want to live to the letter of the Islamic law, but do not see the jihad or holy war as an important component of religion. The fundamentalists, however, do. They are completely convinced that the true religion can be spread by taking up weapons in hand. […] Everyone who maintains a deviant thought is a heretic. In essence are the fundamentalists against every form of renewal. They want to live like in the time of the Prophet Mohammed. […] Extremist Muslims have the holy conviction that they hold the truth. They believe that their truth come directly from God and they are able to force this on all other people in the world with violence.”

“The fatalism of the Taliban and Bin Laden is not different from that of the RAF-terrorists in Germany, the ETA in Spain, the IRA or Timothy McVeigh, de perpetrator of the attack in Oklahoma City. There is a big difference. The fundamentalists reject any form form of progress.”

The fundamentalism of the Saudis is based on the teachings of the Wahhabites 
“named after the founder Mohamed ibn Abd al-Wahhaab, who lived in the 18th Century. He wanted to bring Islam back to its bare essentials. Only what is in the Qur’an and the Sunna (the mores of the Prophet), can function as the basis for the belief and society. The sacred texts must be taken literally. The result is a society in which the man and woman is kept strictly separate […]”

5 October 2001, Dirk-Jan van Baar, ‘Wanted: Muslim leadership’, HP / De Tijd 

“Everyone can see that the Muslim world allows itself to be intimidated by extremist forces and is not cut out against the demands of [this] time. Only an Islam that deals with the derailments within its own circle and which develops in a democratic direction deserves respect.”

6 October 2001, ‘Behind the veils of Islam’ , VN Dossier

Islam is for many a great evil. Whoever claims to be a follower of the Prophet Mohammed runs the risk of being put in dock. Even though the western leaders have since 11 September done their best to preach reconciliation, within the population it is swarming with misconceptions of what the Islamic belief entails. 

Thijs de Boer, ‘Will the real Muhammed awake?: From peacemaker to conqueror’ 
Muhammed saw himself as conciliator and a tolerant philosopher. He was against suicides—even against those inspired by religion—and loved fragrance and women.. Why is he getting the blame for every deed of terrorism now? Attempt to restore the honour of the Prophet. 

Hans Jansen, ‘A person cannot be any worse than a Crusader: Islamic fundamentalism in short’ 
The fundamentalists have been put in the dock after the attacks on America as the perpetrators. But how guilty are the governments of the Middle East actually?

13 October 2001, Pieter Kottman, ‘Disco-goer changes into an extremist: Isolated, uprooted youths can be vulnerable for hate dogmas’, NRC 

“Moussaoui [the brother of Zacarias, the so-called ‘twentieth terrorist’ ] persistently points to the peaceful teachings of Sunnite Islam and to the necessity to see the texts in their historical context. ‘I did research, went to all the mosques in the neighbourhood, because I wanted to know what he was occupied with. Only after two years, in 1994, did I see the texts that were so-called derived from the Qur’an, that showed commonalities with the radical opinions of my brother. Alarming texts, calling for hatred, violence and segregation, completely in conflict with what the Sunnite Islam stands for. I saw the danger because I saw what it did to my brother, with whom it was impossible to communicate. At that moment I decided to deploy myself to protect youths against that trap. A trap that is set by people who are only driven by hunger for power and lust for money.’ ”

“[…] The seed of evil shelters in social exclusion. It is a fact, that our boys there, for whatever reason, have to struggle with that to a more or less extent. I have had to experience it myself, given my skin colour, but coincidentally and fortunately I met the right people, through whom I did not become derailed. But I realise how easy it is to reach out to isolated, uprooted, ignorant and socially free youths. Through their vulnerability they are susceptible to hate dogmas. 
[…]

We were uprooted in the spiritual sense, cut off from our culture and history. That is dangerous. It creates spiritual and religion isolation. In precisely that vacuum, my brother lost his way.” 

17 October 2001, Harald Doornbos, ‘America may shoot, India must talk’, WD

“The game is called: find the difference between the two following situations: 

1) America is being attacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists that are being supported and operated from Afghanistan. 
2) India is being attacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists that are being supported and operated from Pakistan.

On the face of it, there are not differences. But then look at the consequences. The first scenario led to a worldwide coalition against global terrorism and large-scale military actions against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The second scenario led to a conflict already lasting eleven years in which no-one outside of India and Pakistan is interested, and of which the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, just said yesterday can only be solved through means of a ‘dialogue’.

Pakistan under President Musharraf is a military dictatorship, despite being only a mild one. Society is plagued by religious commands and restrictions. After Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is the strictest Islamic country in the world. It was the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, that set up the Taliban in 1994 in an attempt to install a friendly regime in Afghanistan. Further, Pakistan also supports the Kashmiri ‘freedom fighters’, the Muslim fanatics who are in direct contact with Osama Bin Laden, and who in all liberty use Pakistan as the base for their activities in the Indian part of Kashmir.”

19 October 2001, Hans Jansen, ‘Frightened Muslims’, HP / De Tijd

“Shruki [put to death in Egypt in 1992 due to his opinions] was of the opinion that the hundreds of detailed instructions on behaviour that according to the ayatollahs and other Muslim scholars are given in Islam, and that are not in the Qur’an itself, are purely man-made. What did these Muslims scholars from later centuries know more than Muhammed, he wondered in this way.

The Qur’an itself states a dozen times that the Qur’an is a clear revelation. Why must there then be so many different interpreters to reveal what the Qur’an prescribes, and how is it possible that those interpreters arrive at some many different interpretations? Is the Qur’an then sometimes not clear enough? 

It is clear that there is no place in the Islamic world for someone who poses such question. Only the death penalty here can still protect man and society aginst doubt, debate and unrest. Of course, it is up to the government that hangs up the noose to bring the execution to a good end. But it is the ‘Muslim scholars’, or the Ulema , who compel the government to this. The governments want to stay friends with the powerful guild of the Ulema, and not to loose their companion in the struggle against the fundamentalists, and therefore give in to what they want.”

24 October 2001, ‘IISS sees new period in world politics, WD

“According to Chipman [IISS, International Institute for Strategic Studies] more conservative ideas will gain the upper hand in the debate about immigration and civil rights.”

10 November 2001, Elsbeth Etty, ‘Maintain moderation’, NRC 

Qur’an, Sunna 2, 190, 191: 

“And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.”

Etty:
“As long as my Islamic fellow citizens do not take such a text too literally, there is not much of an issue. Maar o wee???? if the sacred texts are expressed as political guidelines, not for tribes in the desert, but for citizens in a modern society.”

[…]

“Islam is really not more intolerant than Christianity (in the Middle Ages the Arabs tolerated all Christian sects, while the Crusaders said: kill them, de muzelmen, where thou hit them). For the most part you can say that Islam is being abused as a source of inspiration for terrorists, and that the fear of Islam is being abused by arrogant chauvinists who believe in Western superiority.”

1 December 2002, Farida Faouzia Charfi, ‘Islam must separate knowledge from belief’, NRC

“In many Islamic countries scientific thought is now less free than in the Middle Ages. Under the influence of the fundamentalists, many [still] do accept the blessings of technology, but [it is] the open mind that makes scientific progress possible. 

End of December 2001, Joris Luyendijk, ‘Islam is the problem’; Antoine Maqdessi, winner of the Prince Claus Prize, NRC

“With research into oneself and self-criticism, the Islamic world will always remain backward, Antoine Maqdessi, the recently decorated Christian intellectual from Syria, says. Arabic dictators hinder debate.”

“Muslims take everything literally, Maddessi believes. They have never learnt to criticize and abstractise , because the regimes under which they live use all means possible to discourage, unlearn and punish that.”

January 2002, Farid Esack. ‘Is the Face of Islam Changing? The Editors Interview’, uscatholic.org 

“To be honest, we are a small minority in different parts of the world, but the current crisis seems to be pushing people into a greater understanding and appreciation of progressive Islamic theology.”

[...]

“If you look at the language of your president, his notion of absolute evil and complete abhorrence, as well as Osama's language of complete abhorrence, neither recognizes the possibility of any grace on the other side. Both espouse very hardened kinds of fundamentalisms. I don't think that Bush is the problem, but neither is Osama solely the problem. It's these fundamentalisms and what gives rise to them that are the crucial issue.”

27 April 2002, Afshin Ellian, ‘Political Islam is enemy of the West’, NRC

Political Islam has nothing to teach Europe. The problems with the European Muslim proletariat result in an appalling heritage, of which the multi-culturalists are partly responsible, Afshin Ellian believes.

“Islam has a fascinating but at the same time problematic birth certificate, in which the original ideals of equality and freedom were soon suffocated in violence and war. The history of [Islam’s] existence is of essential importance in order to understand the problems of now, and the struggle with the multi-cultural society.”

“When the Prophet Mohammed was faced with terror and oppression in Mecca, he did not use armed resistance, but [instead] he fled. He did not seek conflict, but [instead he sought] a way to continue with public debate. Eventually he arrived in Medina—the word means ‘city, polis, public space’—and Medina because the Roman equivalent of understanding of civilization on the Arabic peninsula. But Mohammed’s republic was a shaky whole. After his death it soon resulted in wars and civil wars. The first followers of Mohammed, the four Caliphs, mediated the internal struggles on the peninsula with the sword. From the beginning, was Islam as a civilisational movement strongly tied in with politics.”

“In contrast with the first three centuries of Christianity, when people changed over to the new belief without compulsion, Islam was spread with violence. Since 634, with the accession of the second holy Caliph, Omar, the Prussians, the Egyptians and other peoples were conquered and Islamised with violence.”

“That Islam became the dominant religion in so many countries is due more to coincidence, as a result of political violence, than a conscious religious choice. The history of Islam is with the jihad, the holy war, an unbroken process of violence and war after the death of Mohammed. What is called political Islam, the approach to Islam not as an individual religious conviction, but as a religious system of values that ust be translated politically, is therefore inherent in Islam itself. ” 

[…]

“If you read the Qur'an in a mystical-poetic way, you will find a source of beauty and inspiration. If you read the Qur'an as a constitution, you will find a source of fundamental inequality, fear, incitement to murder and jihad.”

June 2002, Fatema Mernissi, ‘Size 38: the harem of the Western woman’, Ode

‘I was born in a harem’. That sentence began the first book of Faterna Mernissi. In the West that raises a smile, but Mernissi herself cannot not really appreciate that smile. The Western image of a harem differs from Eastern reality. A harem is not a wonderful place where beautiful women are sexually available, but mainly a sort of prison in which women are oppressed and men are confronted with rebellious mistresses who are out to spoil their sexual pleasures. In Islamic harems, mainly, fear overwhelms the women, and doubt the men. Not the land of laziness. 

In her fourth book, Le Harem et Occident , the Moroccan sociologist Faterna Mernissi researches the Western grin at the word ‘harem’. She writes about the oppression of women, objects of lust, shame, sexual desires and cultural and religious concepts. Mernissi concludes that the Western woman is not so much better off compared to her veiled sister in the East. […]

“The compulsion of the Western harem is barely visible because this is put forward as an ethical choice. It is just like the feet of Chinese women: men in China had decidde that beautiful women had small feet, the feet of children. Therefore the girls broke their feet in order to preserve the size that was viewed as ideal; the perfect woman was the woman who, in her strive toward beauty had mutilated herself and had proven to the extent that the seduction of the man was her greatest ambition. In the same way the perfect Western woman keeps her hips in shape so that they would remain the ideal size. We, female Muslims, fast one month per year. The Western women fast twelve months per year, What an astonishment, I thought to myself, while I looked around me to all those American women who look as if they were barely sexually ripe girls.”

3 July 2002, ‘Most unfreedom in Arabic countries’, WD

“The Arabic countries have the lowest level of freedom in the world. That hinders those countries in their development. That is stated in a report of the development programme of the UN (UNDP) which appeared yesterday. The lack of any some form of emancipation of women and flaws in the education sector which lead to illiteracy are the two great causes of a trailing development.” 

September 2002, Hans Beerends, ‘As if we are criminals’, GroenLinks Magazine 

Marjo Rashid-Stals:

“The permanent suspicion of Islam has, in my opinion, everything to do with the need of Presiden Bush to pinpoint Islam as the new ememy of the democratic West. Due to the oil interest of the United States dictatorial governments of Arabic countries are supported on the one hadn, while at the same time Muslim movements that rise up against that dictatorship are painted as terrorists. […] Calling each struggle of the Muslim communities has a political reason.”

“Islam is at the core a beautiful religion, just like Christianity. It is about time that the positive sides of that belief are recognised and encouraged.”

12 September 2002, James McGonigal, ‘Oriana Fallaci settles with Islam’, WD
Oriana Fallici, ‘the anger and pride, Bakker.

“In her basic judgment about Islam as a religion and way of life which not only skews progress, but actively obstructs it, she is not alone. The India writer V.S. Naipaul wrote in 1981, after a visit to four Islamic countries: ‘the belief derives its power from the past, by which development is blocked. This lack of development blocks the relationship with the West at the same time. Anger and anarchy that are the result of this close the people in on the belief, and in this way the round cycle remains.’”

“[…] If you follow her reasoning, the West must declare war on Islam, a sort of Christian jihad, to begin with in its own backyard. With this the authoress seems to be imprisoned in her reasoning against the backward laying down of virtues and values on another.”

15 December 2002, Joris Luyendijk, ‘Dream TV breaks Arabic taboos, NRC

“In their hunt for viewers commercial Arabic satellite channels are increasingly going further. Women use that in order to break through the grip of conservative Muslims on public opinion.”

[…]

“This obscene programme has made the Egyptian youth addicted to perversity”, is the opinion of the newspaper Al-Nabaa, while competitor Al-Ahrar writes about: “a scandal that deeply paralyses peaceful families.”

“[…] The commotion indicates […] how the male conservative establishment here becomes especially nervous and defensive”. 

17 December 2002, Ton Crijnen, ‘Islam and human rights: Dawn appears in the Muslim world as well, Trouw

“Are Islam and freedom of religion by definition contradictory? ‘Not at all’, jurist Mohamed Eltayeb says, ‘it only depends on how you interpret the Qur’an and tradition. […] Muslims are ultimately sober people as well. […] With time, the dawn of a new, post-modern time will break too’.” 

21 December 2002, ‘Hirsi Ali revises ideas about Islam’, WD

“Ayaan Horsi Ali, candidate member of the Second Chamber [Parliament] for the VVD [Dutch Liberal Part] has retracted earlier statements that Islam is a backward culture. ‘I regret that I said that Islam is backward’, she said yesterday during a conference on Islam of the VVD and the PvdA [Dutch Labout Party].”

21 December 2002, Yoeri Albrecht, ‘It cannot be without war’; Ian Buruma, Robert Kaplan and Norman Stone about the conflict between the West and Islam, VN

Ian Buruma:
“The movement of the revolutionary Islam goes back to ideas from the beginning of the 20th Century. It was in that time an answer to the radical secularization à la Atatürk in Turkey. The Turkish reform forbid women wearing veils, Islam was banned from pulbic life with brute force. That happened in Egypt as well under Nasser, and in Iran under the Shahs.”

“That drastic westernisation prompted a reaction. Then appeared the radical fusion between old relgious ideas and an ideology derived from national-socialism and communis. The Islamism is therefore a modern movement, not a medieval one.”

According to Buruma, who has long lived in Japan, great communalities exist between the situation and Germany and Japan on the eve of the Second World War and the circumstances in the Middle East now. 

24 December 2002, Kader Abdolah, ‘The world cooks like a giant pan’, de Volkskrant

“In order to go against that [western] influence, the clergymen load the pupils with Qur’an lessons, but they could not restrict the curious person. Millions of TV-[satellite] dishes were hoisted. The dishes were forbidden, but nobody listened. The moral-agents shot them to pieces. People cleared the dishes away during the day, but place them against during the night.”

27 December 2002, H. Gisbing, ‘AEL’, WD

“[…] The Muslims view Europe as a war zone. There, where the non-believers live, Dar el-harb. […] Western science and technology are seen as heretics. […]”

Fundamentalist Islam says […]: ‘There is no other authority than the authority of God.’ Therefore they are:

They are for the dissolution of the separation between Church and State. 

3 February 2003, Patrick Chatelion Counet, ‘Fundamentalism: wretched duplicates do not touch the fundamentalist, Trouw

“Fundamentalism is named with one breath [together] with aggression and attacks. But it is mainly [about] taking texts literally and not wanting to bring the truth that that delivers into discussion. Bible scholar Patrick Chatelion Counet explains that interpretation [is a must], because there is such a big difference between ‘revelation’ and the ‘holy book’. But the fundamentalists do not want to hear it, because ‘it’ is written. Fundamentalists are not only among the believers.” 

5 February 2003, Ton Crijnen, ‘Muslim extremism: Fleeing to Allah and into anti-Western terror’, Trouw

“Repeatedly the name surfaces: Takfir wal Hidjrah. This sect of Muslim terror has numerous attacks in its name. Reason why Trouw frequently reports about it. What inspires these extremist fundamentalists precisely?”

22 February 2003, Joris Luyendijk, ‘A cursed escutcheon: West helps Arabic fundamentalists’, NRC

“Can democracy [exist] in the Arabic world? The West would now rather want nothing at all. But the West was responsible for the [fact] that Arabic dictators came to power in the past and stayed.” 

29 March 2003, Joris Luyendijk, ‘Cashing in on life: War is childsplay compared with the occupation of Iraq, NRC

“The Americans shall yet win the war, but the occupation will be a bloody mess. A mess that can shake the foundations of the Middle East. So says Dr. Diaa Rashwan, the most important research at the Al-Ahram Centrum for Strategic Studies in Cairo. He is political scientists, specialized in political Islam and fundamentalist movements like Al-Qaeda. [...] The attacks of 11 September were a godsend for neo-conservative hawks in America, Rashwan believes, because they now get the chance to press forward an agenda that they long already had before their eyes. ‘The occupation of Iraq offers the Arabic fundamentalists actually the same sort of chance.’ ”

2003, Farish A. Noor, Towards a Progressive Islam on Our Own Terms, internet

[...] Lest it be forgotten, the rich discursive repertoire of Islam furnishes us with enough distinctions and standards to judge these fanatics and extremists. Those who practice the despicable Neo-Kharajite culture of takfir have already exiled themselves from the mainstream of Muslim society and should be regarded as extremists on Islamic terms. Likewise there are those who truly deserve the label of 'progressive' Muslims, as they live up to the standards of openness, tolerance and universal humanism as found in Islam.

But the danger we face today is that there is the 'good' version of Islam being promoted by Washington and the powers that be in the West. [...] Islam can and must be a vehicle for social transformation, democratization and justice on both the local and global levels. But most of all it has to be an effort initiated and sustained by conscientious Muslims themselves, and not Western technocrats and Cold Warriors who can only see Muslim states and peoples as pawns on a global battlefront.”

26 April 2003, Machteld Allan, ‘Arabic village mentality: Middle East perception of Islam’, VN

“Two new studies about the Muslim world reinforce one another. Whereas Roger Scuton approaches Islam as a political-philosophical problem, Bernard Lewis views this religion from a historical perspective. [...] Politics and religion, or ‘state’ and ‘church’ are not differentiated in Islam. ‘Political Islam’ is in fact a double speech. In Islam everything is politics, and thus nothing is politics, as in a totalitarian state. [...] Often on this point begin the confusion about Islam. Islam is not an institutionalized religion, like Christianity, but an all-embracing social-political system. Christianity places itself as church against the state, while Islam wants to combine together with the state. A lot of conceptual confusion should be prevented when Islam is not viewed as a religion, but as a political order.”