We need to talk about this – Fundamentalism
Cartoon by nicholsoncartoons.com.au
Like you, I read the daily headlines in the newspapers and watch the news on TV. Like you, I’m struck by the amount of bad news that is featured by the media, often reflecting a view of the world that is quite different from my own perceptions and causing me to pause and think “what’s actually going on here; how has this situation come about; how do I get to the truth?”
One of the hot topics is religious fundamentalism; generally coupled with crimes against mankind perpetrated by religious extremists – nowadays, usually Islamic, but other religions have their problems too, see below.
Let’s have a look at it together. Here are some questions that need to be answered before we can start to think about how Fundamentalism is affecting our security and, perhaps, our very existence.
Why Fundamentalism?
The name probably dates from 1910-1915, when a series of 12 Christian pamphlets (The Fundamentals) were produced for mass distribution in the US. The pamphlets were designed to counter the trend towards a more open and discursive view of scriptural inerrancy, by bringing people back to a more fundamental and historic interpretation of selected texts and lessons. The idea was very successful – huge numbers were produced for free issue to schools and churches – the proponents of the system becoming known as ‘The Fundamentalists’.
In more recent times, the fundamentalist tag has become associated with Muslim terrorism and ‘The Fundamentalists’ heirs now prefer the term ‘Christian Evangelicals‘ – a rose by any other name!
In reality, the name may properly be applied to people of any religion, especially when their policies include:
- regular reference to a more or less mythical benchmark era when things were better, people were more god-fearing, religious rules were more scrupulously observed, etc
- vigorous propagation of the notion that their co-religionists will be better served by a return to the values of that era
- exhortations to ‘the faithful’ to join in some sort of holy war to achieve a return to the espoused values
- highly selective interpretation of scripture, emphasising only the parts that support the propagated ideology
- reliance on dogma, coupled with an ironclad refusal to negotiate and/or to admit any other interpretation of the selected scripture
- emphasis on the dominant societal role of men, with women regarded as lesser and/or weaker creatures that require protection
Why Now?
Colonial expansion in the 19th and early 20th centuries placed entire racial and religious groups in positions of economic and cultural inferiority. Since Christianity (both Roman Catholicism and Protestant Reformist) was the dominant religion of the European colonising powers, indigenous belief systems were completely suppressed, actively discouraged or completely ignored by colonial governments. Worse still, in the race to form geographically coherent new colonies, indigenous religions and racial groupings were forcibly amalgamated, with boundaries drawn by European civil servants who neither knew nor cared about the sensitivities of local people.
In the decades following WWII, the collapse and virtually complete abandonment of the colonial system left some newly independent states (like India, Pakistan, most of Africa and much of the Middle East) with political and economic problems and the potential for civil disturbance, as artificial colonial boundaries became redefined by military action and/or mass population movement. Although the scale of these problems was, and is, massive, time and common interest would eventually have achieved a workable compromise but for the following complicating factors:
- growing US hegemony, the growth of Republican Christian Fundamentalism and the growth of militarism in the US, with increasing levels of defence spending – this despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the absence of any credible conventional military threat
- the emergence of capitalism as the dominant economic system, with exponential growth and huge economic influence of globalised business – big companies that commonly have profits larger than the GNP of smaller developing countries. Most global companies (776 out of the top 2000) are US owned
- the Israel/Palestine stalemate and a widely held Muslim perception that the US is less than even-handed in attempting to resolve the situation, (some Jews think so too)
- European and US dependence on middle-eastern oil and the economic imperative to secure future supplies
- the growing porosity of international borders, generally under the stimulus of economic migration, often as a consequence of oppression of religious or ethnic minorities
- mass media news distribution, especially via satellite TV and particularly when beamed into Muslim countries
Most important fundamentalist terrorist activity is both a response to and is enabled by some combination of these key elements, and since the US is a prime mover in four out of the six (admittedly fairly arbitrary) factors, then it is not surprising that the main thrust of international terrorism is aimed at the US and her key allies.
cartoon by nicholsoncartoons.co.au
Why us?
Actually, it is not personal. Despite what we read in the newspapers, the good news is that, to date, fundamentalist terrorism has had a relatively fleeting effect on the economic development of western countries. The bad news is that most western governments systematically use the fundamentalist threat as a bogeyman to frighten the population into the acceptance of limitations on personal liberty and ever increasing military budgets – necessary, we are told, for the war on terror.
In fact, fundamentalist groups are mostly benign and quite harmless to people outside the faith concerned, for example Amish, Doukobor, or Mennonite minorities in North America, or traditional Jewish sects in Europe who take an Old Testament view of the world. At a local level, some factions are more proactive, with a focal point of real or perceived threat to the economic or spiritual welfare and/or values of an ethnic or religious grouping – these groups may have important security implications, for instance in Sri Lanka (Tamil Tigers, Hindu), Chechenya (Sunni Muslim), India (Hindu), Iraq (Sunni and Shia Muslim) and other states in the Middle east.
For the western world as a whole, the biggest potential threats are probably from Wahabist or Deobandi groups – organisations with agendas that include full implementation of Sharia Law in all Muslim countries (something apparently desired by a substantial minority of UK Muslims) and the restoration of the Caliphate, when Islam will resume the triumphant progress that characterised the first centuries of the new religion.
Although western media has conditioned us to think of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as key players in this area – with the associated notion that elimination of bin Laden will somehow reduce or remove the threat, the reality is that Al Qaeda is more a concept of action behaviour than a palpable organisation, but a concept with many adherents, all ready to fill any gap.
What can we do about it?
First of all, don’t panic. The world is not going to come to an end because of the actions of religious fundamentalists, of whatever ilk.
Short term, the only sensible plan for truly democratic nations is the implementation of increased intelligence and security, doing whatever it takes to penetrate and neutralise fundamentalist organisations before they can do real economic damage. An important caveat here is the danger of the enemy within – countries that have had their political and legislative processes penetrated by fundamentalist organisations will be unreliable allies in the fight against terrorism .
Longer term, the outlook is less clear. The status quo is not an option: the searing injustice of the Palestine situation and the economic polarising effects of unchecked globalisation cannot go unanswered for ever, nor will real benefits accrue from the current emphasis on a more ecumenical and tolerant approach to religious difference (see my earlier post on this).
Any attempt to appease or negotiate with terrorist fundamentalism is doomed to failure. Fundamentalist organisations are generally unrepresentative of the populations within which they reside, being unaccountable in any democratic sense and amorphous in nature, breaking and reforming in response to external pressures, leadership change and/or revised interpretation of the espoused religious ideology. Whatever is offered will be accepted, with new demands being made until the conditions of points 2 and 3 (above) are satisfied.
The Humanist approach is to encourage frank and open debate on the real nature of religion, encouraging the two out of three people (UK figures) that are not churchgoers to be more forthright about their real beliefs and emphasising the secular nature of true modern democracy, moving away from the indoctrination of children via religious schooling (regardless of religion or denomination), and ending state subsidy of religious activities.
I would really like to see what you think about this – you can comment (use a nom-de-plume if you wish) by clicking on the ‘reply’ link below. Your email address does not appear in public and all comments come to me for moderation before appearing on the blog, so don’t worry about annoying anyone!