Clarity,
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London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
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+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
midaughter
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- Joined
- May 10, 1971
- Messages
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- 4
DOES THE CONCEPT OF 'FUNDAMENTALISM' HAVE ANY SUBSTANCE BEYOND SERVING AS A TERM OF ABUSE?
Christopher Thomas Marsh*
christopher_thomas_marsh@yahoo.co.uk
London, UK
Fundamentalism can be said to be the result of 'profound dislocations...as a result of rapid modernization and in the absence of mediating institutions capable of meeting the human needs created by these dislocations. Occasioned by...unsynchronized...transformations, and ultimately by the collapse of long-held assumptions about the meaning and purpose of human existence...Religion presented as an encompassing way of life suggests itself as the bearer of that power [of fulfillment]'
- Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby.1
'The truth is that there is no stable self nor a stable other. Every encounter of the self with the other contributes to the process of ongoing transformation'
- Farid Esack.2
An inexorably important feature of the late twentieth century has been the resurgence of religious fundamentalist belief as a dynamics in international relations. The current diversity and complexity of fundamentalisms (understood as above) is most presciently regarded as a response, manifesting itself as a challenge, to the dominant secular discourse of modernity. Fundamentalism is a phenomenon with 'historical antecedents, but no ideological precursors'3, for as Esack's remark above suggests, in every age throughout history there has emerged a challenge from those who felt dissatisfied with the dominant forces of political, economic and socio-religious organization. In the 1970s the resurgence of fundamentalist belief was an attempt to reintegrate religion into both state and society, to relieve itself from its marginalized position in both domestic and international politics. Whilst the term was first used by American Protestants in the early twentieth century, as a distinction from those more liberal in the faith, 'fundamentalism' has come to represent a gamut of religious believers, each with their own dynamics, strategies and interpretations of what they perceive to be the pathology of secular modernism (as the contemporary expression of globalization). The diversity of such groups may serve to obfuscate the phenomenon of fundamentalist challenge to the status quo, but what is inherent to an understanding is that the modern expression of fundamentalism should be seen as a response to the logos of the modern age - the rational, scientific and pragmatic character which has its roots in the emergence in the sixteenth and seventeenth century West of a different type of society. Thus it is essentially a modern response to what has often been perceived to be the aggressive assault of modernity, and its marginalisation of faith, understood as essential to human existence.
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman remarks that globalization is a dynamic and ongoing process which has its own dominant culture, defined largely by the integrative forces of free-market capitalism and technological innovation, and by the transformation of the Schmittian distinction between 'friends' and 'enemies', into one between 'competitors'4. The latter implies at least a limited degree of homogenization, in terms of acceptance of competition within a system and the range of goals implied by the limits of the system. Whilst interaction in the global market system is by definition voluntary, being subject to its implications is not. As a response to this, the rise of fundamentalism marks the assertion of the right and perceived necessity to maintain the polar distinction between what is a legitimate 'truth' and what is not. Gungwu remarks that the globalization of secular values has exposed their limitations and has provoked the need for a new dichotomy which highlights the spiritual vacuum which many feel.5 Esack claims that '"The known" is a powerful shield against what we perceive to be - and indeed often is - a hostile world; it enables us to survive. Or at least, this is how we feel'6. In other words it is a rejection of an imposed system and by association its own 'truths' and homogenizing restraints.
The dichotomy is however essentially artificial in that the fundamentalist mind-set tends, in Bruce's words, to 'consolidate the bad people'7. For example Christian fundamentalists in the US do not regard themselves to be confronting a spectrum of different groups with disparate agendas, but rather they create a single, unified whole to oppose, composed of for example liberal judges, those advocating sexual liberty, free-speech activists and media producers. In this sense fundamentalists represent anti-movements, both defending and asserting themselves against an 'other'. Paul Weyrich, a member of the fundamentalist Catholic cause in the US, and credited with coining the phrase 'Moral Majority', stressed the importance of 'labelling the opposition, putting them in a box and telling others that the opposition is composed of people who do not follow the Pope'8. This tendency has the advantage of creating consensus and a platform from which to demand loyalty from supporters, and so aims to consolidate identity.
The insistence on viewing identity as stable is reflective of uncertainty and thus 'ecause we refuse to risk a full life of knowledge of the other, we die behind our fears and prejudices'9. Indeed the desire to view and maintain identity as stable and irreducible is the driving force behind resort to fundamentalist interpretations of belief. However President Khatami of Iran remarked that the active nihilism that characterizes many of the world's fundamentalist movements 'assumes various names, and it is tragic and unfortunate that some of those names bear a resemblance to religiosity and some proclaim spirituality'10. Khatami's remarks inevitably contain their own prejudices, and indeed it would be unjust to relegate most fundamentalist movements to those espousing a form of nihilism. Appeals to 'fundamental' beliefs do contain the adamant truth that the 'olive trees' of Friedman's analogy carry great significance for people; 'They represent everything that roots us, anchors us, identifies us and locates us in this world - whether it be belonging to a family, a community, tribe, a nation, a religion...'11. This need not be regarded as explanation of the insecurity inherent to the psychological mind-frame of any human being, for as Rabbni Kushner claims 'if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost'12, but it certainly points to the at least partial failure of secular society to cater for human socio-psychological needs. This appeal to the mythos in life - that which is not open to rational investigation and which does not accord to external realities - was relegated to virtual irrelevance in the secular tradition of the Western Enlightenment, which discounted it as superstitious falsity.
The distension of the logos aspect in many societies in the modern era is obviously deemed to be insufficient by many people as a basis on which to construct social and political organization. Fredericks asserts that 'What Westerners need to take seriously is that the secular model is not the only option for being a modern nation...We just presume that any Muslims who say "We want to be a Muslim society" are leading their people back to the 'Middle Ages'. Westerns can't imagine any other form of modernity than to be secular'13. Whilst the Western secular model of modernity has often demonstrated a benevolent and humane countenance, in many of the non-Western parts of the world where fundamentalist movements have sprung from, it has been experienced as invasive and alien, often spawning imitation and dependence, from Western favoured elites. The exaggerated political instability, economic stagnation and cultural alienation resulting from globalizing forces in modernity, caused Fredericks to note that fundamentalism represents an embattled religiosity, thus 'Modernity was forced on Islam...The fact that we would have violent reactions and that we would have many, many voices in the Islamic world saying at times contradictory things should come as no surprise'14. Fundamentalist conceptions of a modern nation seek therefore to define and reinforce the bases of a particular identity at multiple levels that have been ruptured by the dislocations of modernity. In so doing they seek to enable a communion with a fundamental reality that transcends temporal and spiritual boundaries.
It is in this forging of nationhood that religious fundamentalism holds much of its conceptual credibility. Gellner's claim that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations were they do not exist', can be equally attributed to any fundamentalism, claim Marty and Appleby.15 What marks fundamentalism out form many movements which are in essence concerned with defining and reinforcing a national consciousness, is that the former is characterized by a religious exceptionalism, the belief in the deserved priority, theoretically in the sense of revealing the 'divine truth', and practically in terms of the rootedness in territory, of one religious tradition over another. Thus the RSS (The National Union of Volunteers - a Hindu activist movement) in India, regards Hinduism to be the authentic source and essence of multiethnic and multi-religious India, and seeks to define their citizenship on the basis of Hindu-ness. Similarly Sinhalese Buddists regard their ethnic heritage as granting them empowerment and priority over the neighbouring Hindu Tamils and the Muslims further abroad.
Such practical and theoretical exclusive absolutism amongst fundamentalist movements inevitably leads to the recasting of the dialectic between adherence and opposition as increasingly integral within the relationship between believers and non-believers, and even between the former and those of 'lukewarm' faith, who often attract as much of the ire of fundamentalist movements as those who do not share the faith to any degree. Esack refers to this radical, religious absolutism as follows 'an obsession with a single truth as understood by me or my group, the demonizing of all others who refuse to get behind this "truth", the willingness - even desperation - to destroy those who offer alternatives in a holy war...and the conflation of ideals with one's personal being'16. For example the Haredim, the Jewish extremists in Israel that gained political capital in the 1980s, saw themselves in conflict with modern civilization and opposed both gentiles and religious Jews who did not share their view of Judaism. They opposed many of the leaders of religious Zionist parties for contributing to the creation of what they saw as an ideology of mediocrity, descrying their failure to counter the eroding effects of contemporary culture. Thus the Islamic dakwah movement in Malysia similarly diverted much of its attention to 'lax' members of the umma (world Islamic community), rather than by encouraging new proselytes, with the intention of formulating a stricter observance of Islam.
Esack goes so far as to suggest that the free-market, post-communist triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War had its own misguided but fundamentalist logic. The free-market was heralded as the only path to salvation, it was insisted that others must be converted, with eligibility to the world community based on acceptance of the supposed universalism of liberal democratic values, the 'other' tolerated so long as it remains part of the lunatic fringe, and when it does challenge the system, free-market democracies show little respect for international law.17 Whilst it may indeed seem that the pursuit of free-market liberalism by the West is every bit as truculent as the fundamentalist's pursuit of divine rule, the former's vitriol cannot be taken to be categorically fundamentalist per se.
The fundamentalist project of reinforcing a national consciousness, is characterized by the attempt to enforce a self-subsisting discourse which does not yield to the 'compartmentalizing tendencies of the modern social sciences'18; it seeks to stand as an irreducible basis for identity, and is predicated not on a conservative orthodoxy as is often taken to be the case, but rather represents a synthesis of the traditional and the modern, although nostalgia for a 'golden' past is often employed as rhetoric. As they stand alone, traditions are considered by fundamentalists as little more than accretions, which may serve only to make less pure the 'original' vision of the founder, thus 'the privileged past is defined with a keen eye on the particular challenges of the present and the opportunities of the future'19.
Indeed Marty and Appleby claim that fundamentalists have a closer affinity to modernism than to traditionalism; whilst rejecting secular modernism, they seek to adapt modernism to work towards their own potential hegemony. Thus the American Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwell commented that America is 'a society...that is quite sophisticated and very educated...a clever generation...but one that is suffering because men are doing what is right in their own eyes and disregarding God's immutable laws. If a person is not Christian, he is inherently a failure'20. It has frequently been noted that fundamentalisms have adopted modern organizational methods and structures and have benefited from support from colonial powers. For example the idea of the Sikhs as a martial race with a distinctive identity was aided by the British in India who feared an upsurge in Hindu nationalism. Militant groups have also taken advantage of symbolic targets, in for example Egypt where the al-Tawaqquf wa al-Tabayyun Islamists targeted non-Islamic banks (for collecting interest, which is against conventional Islamic interpretations of the teachings of the Koran), tourist resorts and liqour shops.
Much of the substance of the concept of fundamentalism derives from the fact that it is as illustrative of conflict within a faith, as conflict between faiths or between religious belief and secularism. Hefner claims that 'Developments in all there religions [Christianity, Islam and Hinduism] underscore that the real clash of civilization in our era is not between the West and some homogenous other but between rival carriers of tradition within the same nations and civilizations'21.
For example Monshipouri and Motameni distinguish between conservatives, globalizers and reformers as separate groups within Islam, each viewing the challenges of globalization differently and each attempting therefore to define particularistic political and cultural symbols in the context of the change wrought by modernity. As bin Laden portrayed the acts of terrorism on September 11th 2001, and America's retaliatory bombing as a clash of civilizations, both Muslims and non-Muslim critics alike labelled his actions as representative of a perversion of Islam, some labeling bin Laden a 'fringe perspective within Islam'22. Contrary to Huntingdon's assertion that the world is witnessing a clash of civilizations, the attacks in September 2001 are better regarded as representative of conflict within the Muslim world, between the fundamentalists and those more moderate, a conflict over the soul of the global umma.
Doran claims that the targeting of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were designed to overcome the weaknesses of political Islam, in its failure to unite.
more at http://conflict-religion.boker.tv/essays
Christopher Thomas Marsh*
christopher_thomas_marsh@yahoo.co.uk
London, UK
Fundamentalism can be said to be the result of 'profound dislocations...as a result of rapid modernization and in the absence of mediating institutions capable of meeting the human needs created by these dislocations. Occasioned by...unsynchronized...transformations, and ultimately by the collapse of long-held assumptions about the meaning and purpose of human existence...Religion presented as an encompassing way of life suggests itself as the bearer of that power [of fulfillment]'
- Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby.1
'The truth is that there is no stable self nor a stable other. Every encounter of the self with the other contributes to the process of ongoing transformation'
- Farid Esack.2
An inexorably important feature of the late twentieth century has been the resurgence of religious fundamentalist belief as a dynamics in international relations. The current diversity and complexity of fundamentalisms (understood as above) is most presciently regarded as a response, manifesting itself as a challenge, to the dominant secular discourse of modernity. Fundamentalism is a phenomenon with 'historical antecedents, but no ideological precursors'3, for as Esack's remark above suggests, in every age throughout history there has emerged a challenge from those who felt dissatisfied with the dominant forces of political, economic and socio-religious organization. In the 1970s the resurgence of fundamentalist belief was an attempt to reintegrate religion into both state and society, to relieve itself from its marginalized position in both domestic and international politics. Whilst the term was first used by American Protestants in the early twentieth century, as a distinction from those more liberal in the faith, 'fundamentalism' has come to represent a gamut of religious believers, each with their own dynamics, strategies and interpretations of what they perceive to be the pathology of secular modernism (as the contemporary expression of globalization). The diversity of such groups may serve to obfuscate the phenomenon of fundamentalist challenge to the status quo, but what is inherent to an understanding is that the modern expression of fundamentalism should be seen as a response to the logos of the modern age - the rational, scientific and pragmatic character which has its roots in the emergence in the sixteenth and seventeenth century West of a different type of society. Thus it is essentially a modern response to what has often been perceived to be the aggressive assault of modernity, and its marginalisation of faith, understood as essential to human existence.
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman remarks that globalization is a dynamic and ongoing process which has its own dominant culture, defined largely by the integrative forces of free-market capitalism and technological innovation, and by the transformation of the Schmittian distinction between 'friends' and 'enemies', into one between 'competitors'4. The latter implies at least a limited degree of homogenization, in terms of acceptance of competition within a system and the range of goals implied by the limits of the system. Whilst interaction in the global market system is by definition voluntary, being subject to its implications is not. As a response to this, the rise of fundamentalism marks the assertion of the right and perceived necessity to maintain the polar distinction between what is a legitimate 'truth' and what is not. Gungwu remarks that the globalization of secular values has exposed their limitations and has provoked the need for a new dichotomy which highlights the spiritual vacuum which many feel.5 Esack claims that '"The known" is a powerful shield against what we perceive to be - and indeed often is - a hostile world; it enables us to survive. Or at least, this is how we feel'6. In other words it is a rejection of an imposed system and by association its own 'truths' and homogenizing restraints.
The dichotomy is however essentially artificial in that the fundamentalist mind-set tends, in Bruce's words, to 'consolidate the bad people'7. For example Christian fundamentalists in the US do not regard themselves to be confronting a spectrum of different groups with disparate agendas, but rather they create a single, unified whole to oppose, composed of for example liberal judges, those advocating sexual liberty, free-speech activists and media producers. In this sense fundamentalists represent anti-movements, both defending and asserting themselves against an 'other'. Paul Weyrich, a member of the fundamentalist Catholic cause in the US, and credited with coining the phrase 'Moral Majority', stressed the importance of 'labelling the opposition, putting them in a box and telling others that the opposition is composed of people who do not follow the Pope'8. This tendency has the advantage of creating consensus and a platform from which to demand loyalty from supporters, and so aims to consolidate identity.
The insistence on viewing identity as stable is reflective of uncertainty and thus 'ecause we refuse to risk a full life of knowledge of the other, we die behind our fears and prejudices'9. Indeed the desire to view and maintain identity as stable and irreducible is the driving force behind resort to fundamentalist interpretations of belief. However President Khatami of Iran remarked that the active nihilism that characterizes many of the world's fundamentalist movements 'assumes various names, and it is tragic and unfortunate that some of those names bear a resemblance to religiosity and some proclaim spirituality'10. Khatami's remarks inevitably contain their own prejudices, and indeed it would be unjust to relegate most fundamentalist movements to those espousing a form of nihilism. Appeals to 'fundamental' beliefs do contain the adamant truth that the 'olive trees' of Friedman's analogy carry great significance for people; 'They represent everything that roots us, anchors us, identifies us and locates us in this world - whether it be belonging to a family, a community, tribe, a nation, a religion...'11. This need not be regarded as explanation of the insecurity inherent to the psychological mind-frame of any human being, for as Rabbni Kushner claims 'if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost'12, but it certainly points to the at least partial failure of secular society to cater for human socio-psychological needs. This appeal to the mythos in life - that which is not open to rational investigation and which does not accord to external realities - was relegated to virtual irrelevance in the secular tradition of the Western Enlightenment, which discounted it as superstitious falsity.
The distension of the logos aspect in many societies in the modern era is obviously deemed to be insufficient by many people as a basis on which to construct social and political organization. Fredericks asserts that 'What Westerners need to take seriously is that the secular model is not the only option for being a modern nation...We just presume that any Muslims who say "We want to be a Muslim society" are leading their people back to the 'Middle Ages'. Westerns can't imagine any other form of modernity than to be secular'13. Whilst the Western secular model of modernity has often demonstrated a benevolent and humane countenance, in many of the non-Western parts of the world where fundamentalist movements have sprung from, it has been experienced as invasive and alien, often spawning imitation and dependence, from Western favoured elites. The exaggerated political instability, economic stagnation and cultural alienation resulting from globalizing forces in modernity, caused Fredericks to note that fundamentalism represents an embattled religiosity, thus 'Modernity was forced on Islam...The fact that we would have violent reactions and that we would have many, many voices in the Islamic world saying at times contradictory things should come as no surprise'14. Fundamentalist conceptions of a modern nation seek therefore to define and reinforce the bases of a particular identity at multiple levels that have been ruptured by the dislocations of modernity. In so doing they seek to enable a communion with a fundamental reality that transcends temporal and spiritual boundaries.
It is in this forging of nationhood that religious fundamentalism holds much of its conceptual credibility. Gellner's claim that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations were they do not exist', can be equally attributed to any fundamentalism, claim Marty and Appleby.15 What marks fundamentalism out form many movements which are in essence concerned with defining and reinforcing a national consciousness, is that the former is characterized by a religious exceptionalism, the belief in the deserved priority, theoretically in the sense of revealing the 'divine truth', and practically in terms of the rootedness in territory, of one religious tradition over another. Thus the RSS (The National Union of Volunteers - a Hindu activist movement) in India, regards Hinduism to be the authentic source and essence of multiethnic and multi-religious India, and seeks to define their citizenship on the basis of Hindu-ness. Similarly Sinhalese Buddists regard their ethnic heritage as granting them empowerment and priority over the neighbouring Hindu Tamils and the Muslims further abroad.
Such practical and theoretical exclusive absolutism amongst fundamentalist movements inevitably leads to the recasting of the dialectic between adherence and opposition as increasingly integral within the relationship between believers and non-believers, and even between the former and those of 'lukewarm' faith, who often attract as much of the ire of fundamentalist movements as those who do not share the faith to any degree. Esack refers to this radical, religious absolutism as follows 'an obsession with a single truth as understood by me or my group, the demonizing of all others who refuse to get behind this "truth", the willingness - even desperation - to destroy those who offer alternatives in a holy war...and the conflation of ideals with one's personal being'16. For example the Haredim, the Jewish extremists in Israel that gained political capital in the 1980s, saw themselves in conflict with modern civilization and opposed both gentiles and religious Jews who did not share their view of Judaism. They opposed many of the leaders of religious Zionist parties for contributing to the creation of what they saw as an ideology of mediocrity, descrying their failure to counter the eroding effects of contemporary culture. Thus the Islamic dakwah movement in Malysia similarly diverted much of its attention to 'lax' members of the umma (world Islamic community), rather than by encouraging new proselytes, with the intention of formulating a stricter observance of Islam.
Esack goes so far as to suggest that the free-market, post-communist triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War had its own misguided but fundamentalist logic. The free-market was heralded as the only path to salvation, it was insisted that others must be converted, with eligibility to the world community based on acceptance of the supposed universalism of liberal democratic values, the 'other' tolerated so long as it remains part of the lunatic fringe, and when it does challenge the system, free-market democracies show little respect for international law.17 Whilst it may indeed seem that the pursuit of free-market liberalism by the West is every bit as truculent as the fundamentalist's pursuit of divine rule, the former's vitriol cannot be taken to be categorically fundamentalist per se.
The fundamentalist project of reinforcing a national consciousness, is characterized by the attempt to enforce a self-subsisting discourse which does not yield to the 'compartmentalizing tendencies of the modern social sciences'18; it seeks to stand as an irreducible basis for identity, and is predicated not on a conservative orthodoxy as is often taken to be the case, but rather represents a synthesis of the traditional and the modern, although nostalgia for a 'golden' past is often employed as rhetoric. As they stand alone, traditions are considered by fundamentalists as little more than accretions, which may serve only to make less pure the 'original' vision of the founder, thus 'the privileged past is defined with a keen eye on the particular challenges of the present and the opportunities of the future'19.
Indeed Marty and Appleby claim that fundamentalists have a closer affinity to modernism than to traditionalism; whilst rejecting secular modernism, they seek to adapt modernism to work towards their own potential hegemony. Thus the American Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwell commented that America is 'a society...that is quite sophisticated and very educated...a clever generation...but one that is suffering because men are doing what is right in their own eyes and disregarding God's immutable laws. If a person is not Christian, he is inherently a failure'20. It has frequently been noted that fundamentalisms have adopted modern organizational methods and structures and have benefited from support from colonial powers. For example the idea of the Sikhs as a martial race with a distinctive identity was aided by the British in India who feared an upsurge in Hindu nationalism. Militant groups have also taken advantage of symbolic targets, in for example Egypt where the al-Tawaqquf wa al-Tabayyun Islamists targeted non-Islamic banks (for collecting interest, which is against conventional Islamic interpretations of the teachings of the Koran), tourist resorts and liqour shops.
Much of the substance of the concept of fundamentalism derives from the fact that it is as illustrative of conflict within a faith, as conflict between faiths or between religious belief and secularism. Hefner claims that 'Developments in all there religions [Christianity, Islam and Hinduism] underscore that the real clash of civilization in our era is not between the West and some homogenous other but between rival carriers of tradition within the same nations and civilizations'21.
For example Monshipouri and Motameni distinguish between conservatives, globalizers and reformers as separate groups within Islam, each viewing the challenges of globalization differently and each attempting therefore to define particularistic political and cultural symbols in the context of the change wrought by modernity. As bin Laden portrayed the acts of terrorism on September 11th 2001, and America's retaliatory bombing as a clash of civilizations, both Muslims and non-Muslim critics alike labelled his actions as representative of a perversion of Islam, some labeling bin Laden a 'fringe perspective within Islam'22. Contrary to Huntingdon's assertion that the world is witnessing a clash of civilizations, the attacks in September 2001 are better regarded as representative of conflict within the Muslim world, between the fundamentalists and those more moderate, a conflict over the soul of the global umma.
Doran claims that the targeting of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were designed to overcome the weaknesses of political Islam, in its failure to unite.
more at http://conflict-religion.boker.tv/essays