Political Islam (radical Islam or Islamism) is a hard line Islamic ideology that rejects modernity in favour of a world-view in which it is the duty of every good Muslim to help convert the entire world to Islam. According to the dissident Muslim website “No To Political Islam” (www.ntpi.org):

“Political Islam is a movement that arose in the 1940s as a reaction to foreign domination and political corruption. Supported in the 1980s by western governments, it has grown in leaps and bounds since the Iranian revolution and the events following September 11th. But Political Islam is not the answer to either western arrogance or political corruption. It seeks to return Muslims to the dark ages, limiting educational opportunity, denying the right of women to participate fully as adults in the life of the community, denying equality to non-Muslims, and imposing its own brutal and outmoded interpretation of Sharia law on every aspect of public life.

“Among the hungry and destitute, Political Islam gained support with the promise of salvation for the dispossessed. But while drawing its strength from those who would fight oppression, it seeks to enslave all Muslims. It opposes progressive movements for liberty, freedom, justice and equality, and is opposed to cultural and intellectual progress. Throughout history Muslim reformers have opened up new vistas of intellectual and cultural achievement, tolerance and diversity. Political Islam on the contrary, seeks a narrow, petty, joyless, intolerant and closed society. It rejects all modernity, science and technology - except the technology of death.

“Political Islam is a reactionary movement that has no place in the modern world. Over the last two decades, millions have been, and continue to be, murdered - shot, decapitated, stoned to death, and publicly hanged – by Islamic regimes and movements in Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and Central Asia, while millions more have been forced into exile. The Islamists equate even well-founded dissent with blasphemy. Thousands of Muslim opponents have been killed and millions silenced through fear. Our silence is taken as support for the Islamist agenda. But the vast majority of the world's Muslims reject Political Islam. The time has come for our voices to be heard.

“The way to restore our pride is to move forward not backwards. We oppose Political Islam and its agenda of hatred and oppression, and its illegitimate pursuit of the most barbaric interpretation of Sharia law. We seek a future in which all people, men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, can enjoy the benefits of equality, democracy, human rights, freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression.”

Political Islam is growing through education. Poor parents in Pakistan, for example, unable to pay for a normal education for their sons, send them to madrassas (Quranic schools) where they receive free education, food and lodging. These schools are funded by Saudi Arabia and promote hard-line Wahabi teaching. Organisations such as the Muslim brotherhood have been hugely successful in countries such as Egypt by working at grass-roots level.