The Challenge of Fundamentalism maintains that the process of globalization, mostly addressed in terms of the spread of "McWorld," is misleading. There is no globalization when it comes to culture and civilization; on the contrary, the politicization of world religions in an age of crisis of structure and meaning is a source of fragmentation. Culture is a production of meaning, not consumption manners. Resorting to religion for the articulation of dissent results in translating religious beliefs into political convictions, and this book addresses the politicization of religion as religious fundamentalism. The new ideology poses a challenge to the world order of secular states. For non-Western civilizations, it becomes a vehicle for the claim of both de-secularization and de-Westernization. Religious fundamentalism is a global political phenomenon observable in all major world religions, but the fact that only Islam and the West have universal claims explains this book's focus on Islam. Giving Islam a political imprint results in an ideology called "al-Islam al-siyasi," political Islam. This ideology has little to do with the religion or the history of the related civilization, for political Islam is not a religious belief. It is a political ideology which is both anti-Western and anti-secular, and it is an ideology charged with establishing a world order alternative to the prevailing one designed by Western norms and values. Instead of this envisaged world order, however, we are currently encountering de-stabilization effects resulting in disorder.

The information provided in this book develops the argument that our age is characterized by a simultaneity of structural globalization and cultural fragmentation and that the overall structural networking coincides with the revival of norms and values not compatible with one another. The first two chapters provide the general world-political framework for the rise of fundamentalism, and the focus is set on the World of Islam, the Middle East in particular. Tibi argues that the Gulf War of 1991, nothing more than a fading memory for the West, continues to be vital in the anti-Western attitudes of the people in that region. The Gulf War left a "Saddam Hussein legacy" now mixed with the thriving politicization of religion resulting in political Islam. Tibi looks beneath the surface of events and is able to contribute the attitudes of Islamic fundamentalists to political analysis of the observed anti-Western. In this profound background analysis he touches on the crisis of meaning resulting from exposure to the World of Islam and the socio-cultural setup of modernity. The rise of political Islam leads to an increasing cultural fragmentation, a decline in consensus, and the diffusion of power in world politics. In the Middle East, religious fundamentalism is the greatest destabilizing challenge to the existing order of nation-states, and the ideology of the "Islamic state" is the framework for de-legitimization of existing secular states in the region.

Criticizing political Islam as the Islamic variety of religious fundamentalism, Tibi argues that a proper interpretation of Islam is compatible with democracy and human rights, drawing clear lines between Islam as a religion and the abuse of this religion in the development of "al-Islam al-siyasi." The book ends by presenting democracy and human rights as an alternative to the challenge of fundamentalism. In rejecting Western universalism, Tibi bases his plea on cross-cultural grounds for averting a clash of civilizations, and in his view, the clash of civilizations is a clash between fundamentalist ideologies --not between the civilizations themselves. The Challenge of Fundamentalism clearly illustrates the great diversity and deep strife within the World of Islam, identifying the major political movements in the World of Islam as an expression of religious fundamentalism. It concludes that an attempt to create an alternative world order results only in disorder.