Research Paper on:
Pakistan and Afghanistan Islamic Fundamentalism

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
to any set of beliefs that are held to represent immutable truth. While one might surmise from the media that this violence-prone form of religiosity is a uniquely Islamic  trait, this is not the case (Anonymous, 2001). In fact, as Karen Armstrong has written, "fundamentalism is a global fact and has surfaced in every major faith in response to  the problems of modernity" (Anonymous, 2001). For example, American Christian fundamentalism began around 1900, while the Islamic variety began to surface in  the 1950s when Islamic fundamentalists began to strive to move religion back to the center of Arab life. Furthermore, fundamentalists of any variety have in common the fact that they  consider all tenets of their particular fundamentalist perspective -- Christian, Jewish, Islamic, etc. -- to possess the power of divine law. Consequently, to hold views antithetical to the fundamentalist stance  represents more than mere political opposition, but is viewed by fundamentalists as heresy. Many theories and models have been developed in recent  years to explain Islamic fundamentalism, its impetus, allure, relationship to mainstream Islamic belief, and antagonism toward the West. While the primary focus of Islamic fundamentalists is religious and cultural in  nature, in order to accomplish the goals of fundamentalist sects requires firm control of the political and social apparatus of a particular country. In general, social research on  this topic points toward a connection between fundamentalism and the desire to gain political power. However, violence and fundamentalism are not intrinsically linked, as such.  Nevertheless, it is true that violence has broken out in all forms of fundamentalism -- in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Confucianism (Anonymous,