Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic
Ervand Abrahamian
I.B.Tauris
The slippery label of fundamentalist has been thrown at Khomeini so often that it has stuck—so much so that his own supporters in Iran, finding no equivalent in Persian or Arabic, have proudly coined a new word, bonyadegar, by translating literally the English term “fundamental-ist.” This is especially ironic since the same individuals never tire of denouncing their opponents as el-teqati (eclectic) and gharbzadeh (contaminated with Western diseases). Despite the widespread use of the label, I would like to argue that the transference of a term invented by early twentieth-century Protestants in North America to a political movement in the contemporary Middle East is not only confusing but also misleading and even downright wrong, for the following reasons.
First, if fundamentalism means the acceptance of one’s scriptural text as free of human error, then all Muslim believers would have ... | 
