Islamic Fundamentalism Replaces Communism

Islamic fundamentalism has replaced communism as the enemy of the day. But despite the growing perception in this country that Islamic fundamentalism poses a threat to the United States, many Americans have only a minimal understanding of who Islamic fundamentalists are, what they believe and why their ranks continue to grow.

Misconceptions are common, with one-dimensional views of Islamic fundamentalists as violent extremists prevailing over more nuanced understandings of a movement that is complex and diverse.

Context, say scholars, is everything, and the political and economic climate that pertains in many Muslim countries, particularly in the Middle East, fuels Islamist movements that go beyond respect and reverence for the Islamic religion to adopt Islam as a political strategy or that refer to Islamic principles in calling for social and political reforms. These “Islamist” movements have developed increasing popular support as other efforts at economic and political reform in Muslim societies have failed.

Woman – Half the Man
Islamic sacred law, the Shari`a, has been regarded by Muslims as a perfect, divinely ordained religious-ethical-legal system. The Shari`a relates Muslims to God’s purposes by providing comprehensive directives in the two spheres of human activity: those actions that relate humanity to God, and those that relate humans to fellow humans. The former actions are categorized as `ibadat (literally, “acts of honoring God”, technically, God-human relationships) and the latter is known as mu`amalat (literally, “transactions”, technically, interhuman relationships). Whereas the God-human relations have remained more or less immutable in the Shari`a, the area of interhuman relationships has demanded a rethinking and reinterpretation of the normative sources like the Qur’an and the Sunna (Tradition) to deduce new directives under changed social conditions. There are problems connected with the way normative sources are retrieved and interpreted by Muslim jurists which have hampered the necessary progress towards one particular area in the interhuman relationships, namely, the personal status of Muslim women.

The juridical deliberations in the exclusively male-oriented traditional centers of Islamic learning, the madrasa, have disregarded female voices in the emerging discourse connected with women’s issues and human rights. The redefinition of the status of a Muslim woman in modern society is one of the major issues that confront Muslims. But such a redefinition is dependent upon Muslim women’s participation in the legal- ethical deliberations concerning matters whose situational aspects can be determined only by women themselves. Without their participation in legal-ethical deliberations, women’s rights will always depend on a “representational discourse” conducted by male jurists who, in spite of their good intentions, treats the subject as “absent” and hence, lacking the necessary qualification to determine her rights in a patriarchal society.

Osama Bin Laden
In today’s society, we still see the Islamic religion affect the world around us. An Islam militant named Osama bin Laden has been using this religion to get people on his side and attack other countries for the good of Islam. He thinks more killings will get his people closer to paradise. This militant and his terrorist group has told US that they are declaring a holy war on US; thus, the United States struck back with missiles to destroy some of their weapons and arsenal. The Islamic religion has affected many things in this world from the past and present, which proves this is a popular religion in many cultures.