Islamic fundamentalism is a modern by-product of Cold War ideological clashes, not ancient tradition.

Evidence

As Mahmood Mamdani has shown, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 resulted from a complex confluence of factors, including U.S. covert operations and proxy wars during the Cold War era. During the Cold War, the U.S. government created and funded the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets; the mujahedeen would later become Al Qaeda and target their initial benefactors. Furthermore, the funding of Muslim religious extremists would set the scene for the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. … Islamic fundamentalism, contrary to the U.S. government’s and media’s framing of it as being opposed to and incompatible with modernity, is a modern formation; Islamic fundamentalism is not an ancient or traditional phenomenon but rather a by-product of the ideological clashes of the twentieth century. Mamdani argues that terrorism does not necessarily emerge out of religious tendencies, whether fundamentalist or secular. Rather, terrorism emerges out of political encounter. In this case, the West has played a central role in the political encounter with Islam that produced the terrorist attacks on 9/11. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 575

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the U.S. funding of mujahedeen in Afghanistan, echoing themes in the reader’s broader work on how institutions and state intervention shape political outcomes.
• QUESTION: Mamdani’s ‘political encounter’ framework — worth chasing the full argument from his book to see how he distinguishes religious from political violence.