NAME: BOCOBOC, KRAYZEN BOB T.

SECTION: BSCS 2

Activity 2 - Religious Fundamentalism

In some ways, our ignorance about the Islamic State is understandable: it is a

hermit state, and only a few people have visited it and returned. Baghdadi has only
talked to the camera once. However, his message, as well as the Islamic State's
innumerable other propaganda movies and encyclicals, are available online, and the
caliphate's adherents have worked hard to make their cause known. We can deduce
that their state abhors peace as a matter of principle; that it craves genocide; that its
religious beliefs render it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if
such change would ensure its survival; and that it sees itself as a forerunner of—and
central figure in—the world's impending end. The Islamic State's recent evolution
represents a radicalization of Islam's relationship between religion and state. In the
West, the idea of dualism and Greek thought affected the relationship between religion
and state in Christianity. In Islam, however, the relationship between religion and state
is molded by a completely different tradition and contradictory viewpoint than Western
philosophy, and is founded on the codified system of Shari'a law in Arabic thought. The
inseparability of religion and state in Islam, as well as the function of Shari'a law in the
state, is one of the most hotly discussed themes in Islamic studies. The historical debate
in the West focuses on the indiscriminate merging of church and state, as well as the
separation of church and state as a necessary component of democracy, as well as the
present topic of the relationship between Christian morality and public law. Islamic
fundamentalism is a political and religious reform movement that mixes the political
and religious in an indiscriminate manner.