Islamic Fundamentalism in the Public Square

Muslim fundamentalists throughout the Islamic world have seized upon the question of legitimacy of the regimes under which they live, absolute monarchies and all other forms of authoritarian rule, in order to come to the public square and pose them selves as popular alternatives to the existing unpopular regimes. This links up with the basic suspicion of the West which prevails among these movements, due to the corrupting nature of Western values which contradict Islam, and the alliance that the Islamists find between their corrupt regimes and that same West. To attain their goal, the Islamists have developed a vocabulary and a plethora of symbols to replace the secular institutions and the political jargon that was borrowed from the West. This essay includes a case study of the struggle between the PLO and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.