The term political religion was coined by Eric Voegelin in 1938. This article proposes its application to Islamism, as a way to explain the rise of this ideology in the contemporay Arab World. Nevertheless, the primordial aim of the study is to expound the historical background of Islamism, an ideology born in the political and cultural turn, known as Modernity in the beginning of the XX century. The radicalization of Islamism is analysed as the consequence of the lack of democracy, (...) the political manipulation of religion made both by local and foreign states, and recently, the political breakdown created by the various wars that are developping in some Muslim countries. (shrink)