Social scientists employ rigorous methods of research...

Social scientists employ rigorous methods of research, documentation, and analysis when studying a social system. They use statistics to bring together all the determining factors and conditions in order to describe social change. They attempt, to the highest degree possible, to be as strict and exhaustive as physicists and biologists when dealing with human factors. This scientific spirit forms the very basis of research in the social sciences.

However, unlike the pure sciences, which are based on scientific facts, the social sciences rely on human factors, information provided by people, and so-called public opinion, making them particularly susceptible to subjectivity. From the time the original article was written to the publication of the first English edition of this book over a decade has elapsed.

During that time, we have observed how English terms like “fundamentalism” and “radical Islāmism,” along with Spanish and French terms like integrismo and intégrisme , have been consistently interchanged as if they were equivalents. These terms were treated as synonyms by specialists in Islamic Studies. They have been and continue to be used by social critics and political analysts when commenting upon foreign policy and international affairs.

These spokespersons are often the initial source of public opinion. Subsequently, whether it embellishes or minimizes, public opinion is one of the greatest influences on public life in the Western world. A nation’s likes, dislikes, admiration, indifference and contempt are all sentiments which are based on public opinion. One has only to look at the popular media in the United States for proof of this assertion.

The powers that be are notorious for using public opinion to their advantage to bring people in line with their plans. It is apparent that wars of conquest are no longer waged in the name of expansionism and imperialism. Whether it is called the New World Order of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, George Monbiot, and George W.

Bush; the Jewish Conspiracy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , Adolf Hitler, and Henry Ford; Karl Krause’s World Republic; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; George Orwell’s Big Brother; the World Arrogance or the Great Satan of Imām Khumaynī; the Z.O.G.