Islamic fundamentalism

• It describes the beliefs of traditional Muslims that they should restrict themselves to literal and traditional interpretations of their sacred texts, the Qur'an and Hadith.

• It describes a variety of religious movements and groups in Muslim communities which may be entirely apolitical. An example is the Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary-like organization whose main goal is to increase the personal piety of its members. In this sense, Islamic fundamentalism is just a term for religious conservatism which forms part of the spectrum of Muslim society.

• It describes Muslim groups which advocate Islam as a political movement, especially Islamism, which advocate the replacement of state secular laws with Islamic law.

As a way of reading one's religious texts

Muslims believe that the Qur'an was dictated by Allah, through the Arch-Angel Jabril, to Muhammad and that the current text of the Qur'an is identical to what was said by Muhammad to be the Qur'an. Islam traditionally has also taught that the correct interpretation of the Qur'an must rely solely on the Qur'an and Hadith (the oral accounts of Muhammad's teachings and practices), and nothing else. This excludes tradition, popular practice and all but the simplest reasoning.

While reading the Qur'an does not allow one to unambiguously know the will of God, reading the Qur'an in reference to the practices of Muhammad does allow one to unambiguously determine how Muslims should behave on important issues. This view, commonly associated with Wahhabism by Western sources hostile to islamic ideals, rejects Shi'a Islam, and the four common schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam.

As a social and political movement

As with adherents of other fundamentalist movements, Islamic fundamentalists hold that the problems of the world stem from secular influences. Further, the path to peace and justice in this world lies in a return to the original message of the faith, combined with a scrupulous rejection of all Bid'ah ("innovation') and perceived anti-Islamic traditions. Sometimes this results in Islamism.

Groups advocating Islam as a political movement are invariably responding to complex political and historical situations, usually with deep roots in the local environment. For example, the rise of the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party in Bangladesh would not have been possible without widespread public reaction against the corruption of the secular Awami League government in that country. Unfortunately, this complex local political history is completely lost in the simplistic reductionism of terms like 'Muslim fundamentalism', which simultaneously explains everything and nothing by blaming Islam for being the religion of the majority.

Given the existence of undemocratic and corrupt regimes all over the Muslim world, it is not surprising that for much of the 20th century the dominant form of political dissent in these countries has been revolutionary Marxism rather than Islam as a political movement. However, the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War largely discredited leftist ideologies and Arab Nationalism there by strengthening Islamic parties. Continuing Western support for the Israeli settlement of the West Bank has also increased the anti-American sentiments which Islamism represents.

Many scholars of religion believe that, contrary to their own message, Islamic fundamentalists are not actually traditionalists. Typically, their message is that returning to the original version of the faith requires abandonment of a variety of traditional practices which they contend are medieval innovations, such as the practice of asking favors from "saints" (awliya). However, scholars of Islam hold that the result is that the fundamentalists are creating innovations; they are creating a form of Islam that never existed in the past.

Some Muslim fundamentalists seek to change the laws of their nation so as to make their laws based on the Qur'an and Hadith. While there have historically been many non-violent Muslim fundamentalists, one Western connotation of the term fundamentalism is the assertion of views through violence or oppression, rather than persuasion.

Conflicts with the secular, democratic state