Introduction and Overview

Abstract

The most important ideological struggle in the world today is within Islam. Moderate and secular Muslims, who embrace the compatibility of Islam and democracy and the individual freedoms we all cherish in the West, are being confronted by Islamists, who are extremist activists that hijack Islam and seek to gain political power and reshape societies. Islamists pursue these ends out of a firm conviction in their narrow interpretation of Islam, which holds that all authority derives from God alone, and which highlights the supremacy of the community over the individual. This Islamist conviction undermines the rights of the individual, and thus, universal human rights, and is emerging in much of Europe and the United States as the mainstream.