Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961) has the following entry:
Fundamentalism: a militantly conservative movement in American Protestanism originating around the beginning of the 20th century in opposition to modernist tendencies and emphasizing as fundamental to Christianity the literal acceptance of the absolute inerrancy of the Scriptures, the imminent and physical second coming of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, physical resurrection, and substitutionary atonement b: the beliefs on which this movement was founded c: adherence to the attitude opposing modernism and to the literalist doctrines of fundamentalism 2: a movement or attitude similar in a significant respect (as literalism or strict adherence to traditional beliefs to the American religious fundamentalism Muslim fundamentalism ...
Fundamentalist: an adherent or proponent of protestant fundamentalism 2: an extreme conservative......
Peter Mansfield, the celebrated journalist/author on the Middle East (ex-British Foreign Service) has the following: "Since the earliest times, Arab and Muslim rulers have assumed secular power to some degree -and none more so than today- Sbut the ideal continues to have a powerful influence on the hearts and minds of all Muslims. It accounts for the potent force of utopianism among Arabs -the belief that if they were to return to the ways of the Prophet and his companions the triumph of Islam in this world would be assured. In the West this is usually described as fundamentalism, but in real sense all Muslim believers are fundamentalist, because they know that the Holy Koran was God’s final message to mankind. The triumph of the West in the last two or three centuries is seen by Muslims as an aberration of history...." A History of the Middle East.
1991, Revised Second edition 2003, p.13. [Peter Mansfield died in 1996]
Haris de Silva
Colombo 5
(http://www.island.lk/2004/09/27/opinion2.html)
