Islamic Fundamentalism: A Mistaken Answer To The Demand For Democracy

To affirm the failure of the Arab Spring as a defeat, which favored, on the one hand, the restoration of authoritarian regimes and, on the other, the strengthening of fundamentalist movements, is an understatement. The article aims to show how the collective movements, which animated the protests in the main squares of the capitals of many Arab countries, interpreted the need for political and economic changes that were ignored or repressed by the regimes in power for many years. These movements are the expression of an alternative political countermovement to those that, in recent years, when praising Islam, have theorized and put into practice the revolutionary armed struggle. The difference between these two types of collective movements is present in the different issues at stake that they put at the center of their action. For the revolt movements, the political battle is for the advent of democracy. For fundamentalist movements this means, however, in essence, the constitution of a strong regime of religious truth, even more authoritarian than the political-military regimes that took back power after 2012.