Korene militantného islamu na Blízkom východe
The roots of militant Islam in the Near East

Summary/Abstract: Over the past two hundred years or more cultural pessimism has gradually increased in the ranks of Muslims, scholars, reformists and common believers. The new generation of radical Muslims is equally pessimistic as far as the state of Islam and Muslim society is concerned. However, its pessimism has been combined with radical revolutionary activity, which dismisses secular state and social order that have existed for several centuries as barbaric and godless (the New Jahiliyyah, or jahalia). At the same time, it refuses the left wing policy, which helps to spread secular state power. This, as they believe, undermines the Islamic society, which had somehow maintained its autonomy until 19th century; instead, it offers its own alternative. The radicals call for authenticity. They reject modernity and modernist apologetic Islam and insist on the return of Islam into active politics. They also refuse imported political ideas (sovereignty of the people, the rule of majority), and are thus similar in approach to the fi rst generation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940s and 1950s, who refused the same ideas. To them, Islam had never been democratic. All those who obey human laws (i.e., law created by men) are infi dels and have to be fought against. They are also convinced that it is necesary to stand up against nationalists since these set the boundaries of territorial expression and prevent the expansion of radical Islam. The revival of Islam came as a result of general decadence in the Muslim countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, Islam was marginalised in the countries which had adhered to the principles of nationalism and socialism; political and economic collapse of these countries opened the door to the return of religion. Since 1970s, Islamic revival has taken on various forms. Common Muslims have revived Islamic rituals and social practices; intellectuals have turned away from an overtly European and Western way of thinking to Islamic roots. Islamic revival has also become a shelter for fundamentalists, who have sought Islamic revolution. Fundamentalists have refused to settle for the Islamisation of society; they have striven for an Islamic state. The new millitants have secretly planned to return all Muslims to a purer faith by introducing an Islamic law – Sharia. Corruption and the infi dels – secular moslims, Islamic modernists and the West – have been deemed an „evil“ – and a struggle against modernism broke out.

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