RUI: Islamic Modernism, Liberal Nationalism and Fundamentalism in the Middle East

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This Research in Undergraduate Institutions award (RUI) provides support for a study of three major ideological movements in the contemporary Middle East. The first is Islamic modernism, which became the dominant political tendency within Islam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The second is the ebb of Islam and the rise of various secular ideologies such as nationalism and liberalism in the early to mid-twentieth century. The third is the rise of fundamentalist Islam as the dominant tendency within the opposition movements largely in the sixties and thereafter. The study will use archival materials for Egypt, Iran, India, Pakistan and Syria to examine the causes of the rise of these ideological movements, and to examine the connection between macro socioeconomic and political changes and the rise or decline in ideological movements in the Middle East. This study will provide a scientific understanding of Islamic and other movements in the Middle Eastern countries, and by doing so it may overcome some of the misconceptions that exists in Western cultures on the nature of contemporary Middle Eastern societies and the nature of Islamic movements in general.