Saba Mahmood The Fundamentalist Project Summary

Area studies is a collaboration of ideological beliefs that stem from the framework of Western minds and their need to educate, differentiate and show dominance over non-western countries. Area studies has grown in the United States over the past years. Up until 1940, US universities had produced no more than 60 PhDs on the contemporary non-western world and most dealt with antiquity. Area Studies has laid the institutional basis for the subsequent establishment of Women's Studies, Gender Studies, African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Asian-American Studies, Cultural Studies, Agrarian Studies, and numerous other interdisciplinary centers, and programs since the 1970s. Today, thousands of college and university faculty regularly teach on

the history, literature, contemporary affairs, and international relations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Area studies has grown in the United States rapidly. Only the United States has numerous universities with multiple Area Studies Centers, Institutes, and Programs dealing simultaneously with several regions of the world. (Szanto 4). One of the major critiques of Area Studies is that they have absorbed and have continued to use uncritically the politically biased categories, perspectives, and commitments. One of the major critiques of area studies is that the field in the West has continued to use politically biased categories, theories, and ideas that are akin to previous colonialist ideologies that seek to control the world ideologically by making themselves civilized, and pointing out that the others are barbaric.This means that while area studies was important for America during the cold war, it's not important anymore because the Soviet Union is gone and the cold war is over. Fields like political science say getting rid of this field of study in an effort to promote studies that are more rational and make sense in contemporary times.

Part Two
John O. Voll provides a universal definition of “Islamic Fundamentalism” claims to explain the emergence and historical development of Islamic movements across the Muslim Middle East. Explain his argument and provide your own critique drawing on Saba Mahmood’s criticisms of the Fundamentalism Project. Be sure to use your own words.

The East and the West are two entities that are impossible to separate. John Voll used the term fundamentalism to describe the Islamic faith in today’s eyes. John Voll describes Islamic Fundamentalism as a distinctive mode of response to major social and cultural change introduced either by exogenous or indigenous forces and perceived as threatening to dilute or dissolve the clear lines of Islamic identity, or to overwhelm that identity in a synthesis of many different elements. Voll used this term to describe how the Islamic faith is being used and differentiated today. Voll is accurate by using the term Islamic Fundamentalism, but his theories do not accurately represent the modern middle east.
John Voll did describe how fundamentalism is affected in the Middle East, using Egypt as a main point. He describes the roots of modern fundamentalism in Egypt as, “lie instead in the response of urban, educated youth to the unmistakable intellectual and moral crises created by the rapid introduction of Western ideas and technology.” (Vol 355). Voll’s ideas are used to describe how the Islamic faith is acknowledged. He is saying that fundamentalism occurred as a result of the educated youth trying to accommodate the influence of the Western culture on Egypt. By responding to these western influences, they are slowly losing pieces of their religion because the western world is usually classified as Judeo-Christian, not Islamic beliefs.

“Islamic and Fundamentalism” is Saba Mahmood’s reading of the Fundamentalist Project.

While reading the article, it is clear that Mahmood is not a fan of the Fundamentalist Project and does not agree with many points. She makes many good points in the article with one of these points being that the authors do not take into account western influences when referring to fundamentalism in the Middle East. She also criticizes the authors different viewpoints on Islamic fundamentalists and Protestant fundamentalists, stating that their views on Protestants is that only a number of Protestants are fundamentalists and that they do not represent the full majority, but the number of Egyptians that join the Islamic resurgence represent the fundamentalists in Egypt. Overall, Mehmood criticizes the authors for labeling too many people in the Middle East as fundamentalists and for not separating the different groups of people like the government and the armed militants who attack innocent people. The most important part of this reading was Mahmood’s declaration that the project “paints disparate Islamic groups opposed to contemporary Middle East governments with the single brush of fundamentalism.” Fundamentalism is a form of religion that upholds strict, literal, interpretation of scripture. In regards to Islam, the scripture would be the Quran. The authors of the Fundamentalist Project are saying that the people who attack innocent civilians and cite the Quran as their inspiration are just as bad as the governments who join together to fight these

people.

Part Two
It has been argued by many political scientists that democracy has failed to materialize in the Arab Middle East. Timothy Mitchell has provided a strong critique of this thesis arguing that this failure is related to the conceptualization of “democracy as fundamentally the same everywhere, defined by universal principles that are to be reproduced in every successful instance of democratization, as though democracy occurs only as a carbon copy of itself.” Drawing on Beverley Milton-Edwards’ analysis of democratization discourse and Mitchell’s critique, provide a historical analysis of why democracy is perhaps doomed to fail in the Arab Middle East.

Each nation has different values and rules which includes political diversity. Democracy is control of an organization or group by the majority of its members. Pushing democracy on each country that is broken and corrupt can cause more harm than good. Mitchell believes the forms of democracy that emerges in leading industrialized countries by the middle decades of the twentieth century were enabled and shaped by the extraordinary concentrations of energy obtained from the world’s limited stores. He does not believe it can support foreign countries. While, Milton-Edwards supports the failure of democracy through cultural and religious values in the Middle East. Therefore, the values and history in the Arab Middle East confirm that democracy will fail.
Milton focuses his theory on the oil and democracy in the Middle East. When people talk about oil, the Middle East is the topic of discussion. Our region and its wealth is dominated by the issue of oil. The United States’ interest from the west gives it a reason to want to make sure these areas are politically stable. When the production of energy shifted to obtaining resources from the Middle East, industrial democracy was weakened because carbon-based political mobilization was weakened. This political mobilization is one of the factors that lead to industrial democracy. The western world is more concerned with obtaining oil from these regions than the people in these regions. Therefore, as long as they are getting their sources, they do not make a fuss about their government of the countries.
Milton-Edwards believes that the difference values between the West and the Middle East are the reason democracy would not work. She believes that the Middle East follows more of a liberalization process than a democracy. They want to have basic civil rights for all people, but they do not want people involved in politics and other democratic choices. Their belief of freedom and equality are similar to the beliefs of the western world. This notion makes it difficult for both parties to understand the other. The western world is believing the opposite of what the Middle East believes, and therefore they cannot relate to each other. The Middle East is also strongly supported by their religious beliefs, many of those beliefs do not fit into a democracy.