Fundamentalism and the Secular Society

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FUNDAMENTALISM IS AN UNSATISFACTORY TERM, but it is widely used to describe a militant piety that has developed in every major religion during the 20th century. The aim of fundamentalists-be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, or Buddhist-is to bring God and/or religion from the sidelines to which they have been relegated in secular culture and back to centre stage. It constitutes a widespread rebellion against secular modernity. In every country where a western-style government has been established, a fundamentalist counterculture has developed alongside it in deliberate reaction, aiming to create a sacred enclave of pure faith in a world that seems increasingly hostile to religion.Hence every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been rooted in fear, convinced that the secular, liberal establishment wants to wipe out religion. Each movement has developed in a symbiotic relationship with a modernity and secularism that is experienced as invasive and aggressive. The more fundamentalists are attacked, the more extreme they become, because the assault convinces them that they are correct in their assumption, and that the modern world truly wants to annihilate them and their religion. This is not necessarily paranoid. Jewish fundamentalism became especially prevalent after the Nazi Holocaust and after the October War of 1973, and in the Muslim world, secularism has often been imposed so aggressively-by such reformers as Ataturk, the shahs of Iran, or Gemal Abdul Nasser-that it has seemed an evil, lethal ideology.Modernity has always been problematic. When the western countries began to develop their modern, secular institutions in the 16th century, they were engulfed in three centuries of bloody revolution, dictatorships, anomie, exploitation of women and children, and violent wars of religion. We are watching a similar process in countries that are making the painful rite of passage to modernity today. In some Muslim countries, there are special difficulties. In the west, the modern spirit was characterized by two essential qualities: independence and innovation. In the Muslim world, however, modernization did not come with independence but with colonial subjugation; and the west was so far ahead that there could be no innovation-only imitation. So the wrong ingredients are going into the modern spirit there.Fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, dedicated to fighting the secular state. It is part of the modern world and it is not going to fade away. We must, therefore, deal with it more intelligently than we have done hitherto. Contrary to much popular opinion, Islam is not more disposed towards fundamentalism than other faiths; in fact, it was the last of the three Abrahamic traditions to develop a fundamentalist strain. Nor is there anything in Islam that is inherently hostile to modernity. Much of the terrorism that disturbs us at present is Arab, and Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of Muslims worldwide. Fundamentalism is not necessarily violent; most fundamentalists are simply trying to live an embattled religious life and do not take part in acts of terror. …