Global Feminist Movement

In recent years, the term “religious fundamentalism ” has become highly contested. Much of the literature on the matter recognizes this even as there is affirmation that the term remains politically useful. (Freedman 1995, Sahgal and Yuval Davis 2000, Ter Haar 2002, Bennoune 2007). The term religious fundamentalism was first used by a group of orthodox Protestants in the United States, which published a series of pamphlets entitled “The Fundamentals ” (Ter Haar 2002) at the turn of twentieth century. The articles were written in response to the rise of liberalism in US society and the Social Gospel Movement, both of which brought progressive elements to Christianity (Sahgal and Yuval Davis 2000). The contemporary use of the term is traced to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The term was used in the press at that time to refer to the resistance by the believers in Islam to Western cultural and political values. In 1981, Anthony Burgess in the “Observer ” claimed that there were similarities between Mein Kampf and the Quran and referred to, “the dangerous fundamentalism revived by the ayatollahs and their admirers as a device, indistinguishable from a weapon, for running a modern state ” (quoted in Ter Haar 2002, 3)