Islamic fundamentalists are often perceived as militants bent on overthrowing governments and terrorizing the non-Islamic world. However, most experts on the Middle East agree that the myriad Islamic revivalist groups described as fundamentalist differ in their approaches to political activism. Perhaps the one factor that unites them all is a conviction that Islam is the ultimate truth and that today’s Muslims must return to the early foundations of their faith.

Islamic fundamentalists believe that Islamic culture went into decline in the late seventeenth century, when various European powers colonized parts of North Africa and the Middle East. Secular laws and customs replaced much of the Islamic shari’a (religious laws), and encouraged values considered immoral in Islam, such as an emphasis on self-gratification, materialism, and nationalism. Most damaging of all, in the fundamentalist view, were school systems...