| Summary: | After the resurgence of Islamic activism in recent decades, Islamic fundamentalist groups today seem set to maintain their dominant position across a range of Middle and Near Eastern regimes. In this book, a range of leading Middle East academics come together to challenge and correct theoretical and practical misconceptions about Islamic movements. The result is a volume which questions the process of abstraction -- which leads to the creation of the myth of extremism â€" and offers an account of Islamic fundamentalist thought and movements that places them within their international, regional and local context. In Part I the contributors examine the theoretical, philosophical and political foundations of fundamentalist discourses and the construction of fundamentalist ideologies; in addition they investigate the tools used to study Islamic movements. Part II provides detailed case studies of developments in Algeria, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. These in-depth chapters analyse the causes of the fundamentalist movements' successes and failures.
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