The Rise of Fundamentalism and the Role of the ‘State’ in the Specific Political Context of Palestine

One notable feature of the Islamist discourse is that, despite appearances, it is not monolithic. Within the main discourse, there are multiple discourses that implicitly, if not openly, challenge each other to some degree while adhering to the main lines of their common discourse. Badran1 believes that we need to adopt a fl exible defi nition of Islamism because such an approach allows us to understand the ambivalences and contradictions within this discourse; it even enables us to ‘see the more liberal and progressive’ signals in this phenomenon. It helps us to see the ‘ways in which Islamism is being challenged and eroded from within and thus bears some seeds of its own destruction’.