Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

For years we have tried to insist that there is a difference between normal Muslims and those who believe themselves to be more Muslim than the Muslims and are consequently at war with the whole world. We called them fundamentalists because they declared that the modern world in its entirety was evil and wanted it purified while returning to the fundamentals of the religion by any means, including force.

This semantic distinction between peaceful Muslims and the fundamentalists was challenged in a war of words by people who rejected all categorization and attacked anyone who used such labels. “Brethren: fear God when you discredit these blessed mujahedeen by calling them fundamentalists.” This was the kind of objection to the label that could be heard in mosques and universities. In reality, of course “fundamentalist” is not a term of abuse. It is in fact a polite term for a group in the early days of Islam who were later called the Khawarij or heretics because they turned their backs on the Ummah.

There were in any case many who defended fundamentalism and fundamentalists, and they did so with such enthusiasm that they managed to silence a great number of moderate Muslim thinkers who thought it might be safer to keep their opinions to themselves. The fundamentalists openly declared that they were behind most acts of violence in the last two decades. Whether they were in charge in the Sudan or in opposition in Algeria and Egypt, the atrocities these fundamentalists committed were a cause of great dismay for Muslims all over the world. They spent a great deal of money to lure young people from the Gulf into the terrorist networks and ideology. And they took over the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan.

Today feelings around the world have gone back to apostatizing fundamentalists. “These are not Muslims,” we are now being told. The tide has turned against them, and the widespread support and admiration they once enjoyed has turned sour, and they find themselves for the most part in outer darkness. But now we are left with the question why we were unable all these years to establish the distinction between civilized Islam and the extremists. One reason it was difficult to do was that these people’s arguments needed to be subjected to rational enquiry and measured by the consequences of their actions. But every time they found themselves a new theater of operations they terrorized everyone — most recently in Saudi Arabia — and their arguments were blood and killing as well as all kinds of subterfuge. They used everything from wigs and women’s clothing to heavy artillery.

In the past their mission was simple — hand on the Qur’an and declare war against the West and all apostates, whether it was in the mountains of Afghanistan or the islands of the Philippines. They found their extremist ideas easy to promote because they didn’t touch the people. That is why many rose to their defense. For their part they rejected the term “fundamentalist” despite the fact that it was much milder than what they should have been called. They promised a return to basics and demanded to be called Islamists so as to exclude everyone who disagreed with them.

Should we then have been patient and remained silent? Yes, we should have been patient, and no, we should not have remained silent. If we had confronted their ideas on the turf they were trying to hijack — Islamic thought — we could have stopped them before they grew into a monster. People are by nature inclined to avoid extremism of any variety. And while it is true that the fundamentalists deceived the Ummah for years, recent events suggest that their time — as a major force capable of tainting the whole of Islam and doing it more harm than any extremist movement since the time of the Khawarij — is coming to an end.