ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes five key points. First, the consideration that has led radical Islamist groups to take up an oppositionist stance within contemporary Muslim states is significant feature of the present world order. There is a second reason for that vulnerability, namely, that the fundamentalist project of founding an Islamic state and society cannot fully succeed so long as Muslim states remain components of the present international system and therefore share its intrinsic secularism. Third, what little evidence there is suggests tentatively that the challenge has already started, both in practice and, to a lesser extent, in theory. Fourth, since the wholesale secularism of the modern international system against which the nascent Islamist challenge is directed remains and might even be intensified, there is no good a priori reason for supposing the challenge will be discontinued in the future. Finally, whether it will take a pacific form, as both Khomeini and AbdulHamid AbuSulayman envisaged is, perhaps, more dubious.
