Review of the Literature 3 - Essay Example

amist revivals: revolutionary islamists, traditional islamists, and modernist islamists, where the common thread that binds them is their adherence to fundamental Islamic principles. For him, these different Islamists lead Islamic Revival in diverse terms, but they all argue for the renewal of fundamental Islamic principles. Revolutionary Islamists, also called as fundamentalist, are radical Muslims who advocate political activism and demand the conservative observance of Islam. They want to establish a purely Islamic state and to apply Sharia in their society.

They resist Western beliefs and influences and anything that opposes the main beliefs of Islam. They want to reinstate the classical period, where the society made by Prophet Muhammad and his first four caliphs is the model Islamic state. For Revolutionary Islamists, the primary goal of the Islamic state is to implement the Sharia. The law cannot be separated from how the state should be run. Revolutionary Islamists do not accept the taglid and want to apply ijtihad and they blame the Traditionalist Islamists and their dogma of taglid for the fall of Islam.

Revolutionary Islamists also do not approve of secularists, because this would weaken the ummah and oppose the idea of universalism in Islam. For the past few years, Revolutionary Islamists agree with the application of modern values in Islamic states, as long as they are aligned with the traditional Islamic principles. An example is accepting democratic ruling, as long as the ulama decides on lawmaking procedures and outcomes. Traditionalist Islamists are made of conservative ulama and Islamic scholars.

Like the Revolutionary Islamists, they repudiate the teachings and principles of the West. They want to maintain Islamic beliefs and go back to the erstwhile eras of Islamic classical and medieval periods. They also do not oppose Sufism and other folk varieties of Islam, including the mystical ones. They argue that these different beliefs are part of