The work of both Sadek Hamid and Leila Ahmed from the syllabus.

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Is it surprising that in recent decades 'conservative' religious values and practices have spread among Muslims around the globe? Why or why not.
In the recent decades, there has been an undeniable explosion in conservative religious values and practices. The movement has been dabbed Salafi movement which is largely related to Wahhabism. The conservative movement has been trying to engrain the fundamentalist and puritanical worship championed by the early generations after prophet Muhammad which advocated for support and adherence of sharia law. There have been various approaches in the approach to conservatism and has created divisions among the conservatists but they largely share similar ideologies except for minute differences in their interpretations. The growth of conservatism in Islam is multifactorial. Thus, it is to be expected that conservative religious values and practices have spread among Muslims around the globe due to the following reasons.
There has been a well-funded Saudi Salafi discourse that has bolstered the funding of mosques, massive distribution of literature, the internet and Islamic based learning institutions to spread their conservative ideologies CITATION Ham14 \l 1033 (Hamid, 2014). All of these factors have increasingly led to the growth of the sectarian Salafi movement. First, the internet has become a cheap, readily available source of information and the propagators of Salafism dogma have embraced it as a tool to promote their ideologies. Salafi.com among other conservative website have asserted their dominance on the internet and cumulatively have millions of visitors. Almost any conservative Muslim group has some form of online dominance and they continue to use them to publish their ideologies and woo more followers. All of these group receive some form of funding from Saudi. Secondly, more Salafi mosques have been built and they continue to be the instrumental elements which support the spread and growth of Salafism. In these mosques, conservatives continue to learn about their traditions and selectively on the issues that touch on their course to find Quran justification to advance their course. These mosques also receive big donations from Saudi and other associations, individuals who are Salafis. Thirdly, the Islamic learning institutions have also helped propagate conservative dogma. For example, the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia is known to be the center of Salafism and the pace where young Muslims go to become indoctrinated with conservative Islam. These learning centers are mainly established to serve the religious interest and imparting of knowledge relevant to the job market is secondary. In these institutions, the learners are directly or indirectly taught Salafism. Additionally, Saudi has increasingly funded publication of Salafi media. These publications serve as materials for reference and teaching Salafi disciples and have greatly contributed to growth of Islam conservatism.
The warm reception of the younger generation of Muslim who are in search of religious identities that would restore their religious confidence and pride and found them in the conservative groups CITATION Ham14 \l 1033 (Hamid, 2014). The conservative groups have been aggressive in winning more members for their groups. The conservative Muslim groups target the youth who are not well-grounded in their religiosity and indoctrinate them with their dogma. This is the reason the Jihadists extremists like the terrorist organizations Al Qaeda, ISIL and ISIS have largely relied on. When the youth find a very accommodative group, they buy into their ideologies and often become their ambassadors. Any other conservative media groups continually recruit more members because they want to be the dominant group and quash the other sectarian groups which they have animosity with. Additionally, for each disciple, they train them to be their ambassador such that they help bring more people on board. Thus, each Muslim with skewed religious identity will stick with the group that is accommodative of him/her. The conservative Muslim organization are not short of funds to woo more young Muslims in a religious identity crisis. And with the advent of social media and the internet, the strategies employed by these conservationist groups have multiplied and they have raked in more followers than ever before.
The ...