ABSTRACT
Shalom: How important is Islamic fundamentalism as a source of unrest in today’s world?
Chomsky: Islamic fundamentalism is mainly a reaction to forces of unrest in the world. For many years there was strong secular nationalism all over the Arab and Muslim world. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel-Nasser was a secular nationalist. Iraq has a long tradition of secular nationalism that goes back a century, with democratizing efforts and so on. Iran had a secular nationalist program over a half-century ago, at the time the government of Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in 1953. The failure of secular nationalism, which was both internal and external, and was strongly attacked from the outside, left a vacuum, and I think to an extent the vacuum was filled by Islamic fundamentalism. I guess that’s the way you see it too, Gilbert?
