'Fundamentalism', modernity and the new Jacobins

This paper offers an interpretation of 'Islamic fundamentalism', especially the Iranian Revolution, in the context of sociological debates about 'modernity'. The problematic nature of both these terms is acknowledged. It critizes explanations of 'fundamentalism' that begin from the assumption of a dichotomy between fundamentalism and modernity, arguing instead for a more nuanced understanding of both Islamic revivalism and the modern. The paper begins by offering a model of modernity as a set of bi-modal tensions within which Islamic 'fundamentalism' could be understood as a form of modernist revolutionary populism. This argument is then developed through a comparison between the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution. It argues that there are parallels between the idea of Islamic revolution and the Jacobin revolutionary imagination, which demonstrate the modernist dimension of Islamist movements. The discussion concludes with some observations on Islam, and the closure of the Jacobin revolutionary project.