The rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, led by the successors of the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, tends to pit Muslim against Muslim in countries such as Egypt. Islamic fundamentalists, as is true of Christian fundamentalists in the United States, tend to view all issues in black and white terms · all that they believe in is white (good+, and all that others believe in is black (evil).
Of supreme importance in the Islamic concept of political development is the unity of the secular and the religious. Islam holds that political stability within an Islamic state derives from the ideological incorporation of Islamic values into the political system. Instability in Islamic states is attributed by Islamic scholars, particularly Islamic fundamentalist scholars, to the failure of Muslim elites to draw inspiration from Islam for political development. In this context, some blame for political instability is attached to efforts by the elites in some Islamic countries to introduce western ideologies of secularism, democracy, socialism and nationalism. It is contended that, without Islamic values as an ideological basis, these concepts will fail in Islamic countries. In the United States, Fundamentalist Christians fight against all efforts to separate church and state. Peal back two layers of skin on an Islamic Fundamentalist and on a Fundamentalist and one will find the same zealot · uncompromising, angry, and willing to take any action to destroy all that challenge the fundamentalist belief · whatever the flavor of fundamentalism involved.
Terror is a specific belief that some evil event or action is going to occur. In the distant past, terror was associated with visitations from some all-powerful god, who controlled life and death in an almost indiscriminate manner (Reich, 1998). As mankind became more sophisticated, some individuals, groups, and nations learned that terror could be induced in society through the man...