Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization

by Reza Aslan

Or consider bin Laden, a man with no religious credentials who has never studied in any Islamic seminary and who has only the most rudimentary knowledge of Islamic law and theology, but who has nevertheless managed to seize for himself the powers traditionally ascribed to Islam’s clerical class by, for example, repeatedly issuing his own fatwas (which, according to Islamic law, can be issued only by a qualified member of the clergy). It is his conscious appropriation of religious authority that has made bin Laden so appealing to those Muslims—particularly young European Muslims like Hasib Hussain and his fellow 7/7 bombers, who are themselves mostly ignorant of Islamic law and theology—whose sense of alienation from their own religious communities makes them yearn for alternative sources of spiritual leadership. In his speeches and writings, bin Laden warns these young Muslims not to listen to their clerics, whom he considers incapable of addressing their needs. “No official scholar’s juridical decrees have any value as far as I’m concerned,” he has declared. In fact, bin Laden makes the astonishing claim that following the leadership of these “hypocrite imams” (by whom he means any member of the clergy that disagrees with his interpretation of Islam) is “tantamount to worshiping [them] rather than God.” He then audaciously takes upon himself the duty, traditionally reserved for Islam’s clerical class, of “enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong.” It is a clev...