The Return to Islam

A specter is haunting Europe—and the world in general: the specter of Islamic fundamentalism. All the world powers have entered unto a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: the pope and the president of Russia, Helmut Kohl and Françors Mitterand, French radicals and German police agents, and of course the CIA and right-wing Israeli politicians.

Beyond semantic quibbles (“fundamentalism” is a deeply Christian term, and has no meaning, or even equivalent, within the Islamic tradition), the phenomenon of Islamic revival is obviously gathering force. But is it a danger to world stability and Western civilization? And should one look under every bed for Muslim fundamentalists the way some people (sometimes the same people) used to look for communists in the good old bad days of the evil empire?

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