Formulation of the claim
Fundamentalism and the politicization of religion turn Islam into an instrument of power, and hinder the modernization of its study and understanding.
Why do these elements come together?
These elements come together because they describe a single trajectory that begins by turning Islam into an all-encompassing solution or an epistemic privilege, then moves to its political use within the state and institutions, and ends by closing off the field to critique and deconstruction. Thus, Islamizing the sciences as an ontological privilege and Islam does not solve everything at once show that in comprehensive reductionism religious defense becomes entangled with epistemic claims, and that this reduction disables critical understanding instead of opening it up.
Modernity and the nation-state reveal the limits of politicization and Liberating the study of religion is a cultural and institutional project against political instrumentalization make clear that politicization does not remain a fleeting discourse; rather, it is tied to institutions and to a mode of organizing religious knowledge. Then Fundamentalism invests the inherited imaginary and blocks historical critique, Fundamentalism imposes an old model and closes off the possibility of modernization, and Traditionalist closure hinders the emergence of modern Islam complete the picture: the inherited imaginary is exploited, historical critique is prevented, and the old model is imposed, so the possibility of modern Islam is delayed.
The cluster’s location in the book
This page appears within the book Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Rootedness, where propositions are gathered that explain how fundamentalist discourse converges with political instrumentalization in suspending historical critique and closing off the horizon of modernization. It is directly connected to the axis of the impossibility of absolute rootedness, to the problem of the closure of ijtihad, and to the question of the relationship between Islam and modernity, because the book treats religion as an open historical field, not as a final instrument of power.
Cluster elements
- Islamizing the sciences as an ontological privilege
- Islam does not solve everything at once
- Modernity and the nation-state reveal the limits of politicization
- Liberating the study of religion is a cultural and institutional project against political instrumentalization
- Fundamentalism invests the inherited imaginary and blocks historical critique
- Fundamentalism imposes an old model and closes off the possibility of modernization
- Traditionalist closure hinders the emergence of modern Islam
Brief evidence
This cluster highlights how fundamentalist discourse, when it converges with political instrumentalization, can turn religion from a field of understanding into an instrument of domination. Instead of opening a horizon for critique and renewal, it works to fix meanings and weaken the conditions that allow them to be read historically. For this reason, its elements work together to reveal the relationship between suspending ijtihad and closing the door to the modernization of religious study. The result is that religion is used here more as an instrument of regulatory power than as a spiritual and epistemic experience open to revision.
Conclusion
This cluster gathers elements showing that fundamentalism and politicization do not merely mix religion with power; they also suspend the conditions for critiquing and modernizing it. In this sense, religion becomes carried by an old model and a field of domination rather than remaining a field of open historical understanding.