By Rainer Sousa
From a theological point of view, fundamentalism it is a religious manifestation where practitioners of a particular belief promote a literal understanding of their sacred literature. Not limited to the reality of the eastern world, religious fundamentalism appears among some Christian groups that undertake a literal understanding of the Bible. Among Muslims, this type of manifestation only appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.
The political strand of fundamentalism began to organize itself among Muslims when some scholars and leaders created a worldview based on contemporary ideologies and particular interpretations of the past. In short, we observe that the fundamentalist leaders of Islam claim a whole order of traditional symbols in the construction of foreign policies and forms of organization of governments that are part of the Islamic world.
Contrary to the impression of many, the Islamic fundamentalist movement lacks the “horror of the West ” and “fighting the United States ” in its genesis. The action of these groups took place primarily in the 1950s, when US authorities were visibly concerned about the rise of “left populists” in the Middle East. At that time, the US feared that some Arab nations would join the socialist bloc and, with that, threaten the oil industry.
Between the 1950s and 1990s, the association between the US and fundamentalist groups was at the epicenter of some historical facts. Under the dictator Sukharno , more than a million Indonesian communists were murdered by the militants of Sarakat-to-Islam . In other nations, such as Syria and Egypt, this same type of logistical and military support was used by the Americans to make leftist governments lose their support.
The good relationship with the fundamentalists showed its first signs of crisis in the late 1970s. In 1979, the US provided weapons and training for Afghan groups to fight the invaders. soviet. By contrast, that same year, fundamentalist Iranians overthrew the US-backed government through revolution. In subsequent decades, the United States financed the arrival of the Taliban to the government of Afghanistan.
At that time, several fundamentalist groups defended the thesis that the US promoted interventions and alliances that best suited its interests. In this way, the old alliance was transformed into a relationship of hate in which the “terrorists ” confronted the power of the “demonic empire of the West ”. In 2001, this rivalry reached its apex when members of the Al-Qaeda organization organized the attack on the towers of the World Trade Center .
By exposing the relationship between the rise of radical Islamic groups and US foreign policy, we can see that the religious question plays an almost accessory role. The idea that Islam itself fosters this conflict situation denies a whole set of situations built throughout the 20th century. Undoubtedly, the problem of terrorism faced by the US today stems from misguided diplomatic policies and actions.