50 Big Ideas

18 Fundamentalism

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, an unprecedented wave of Islamophobia swept over the USA. Reflecting the growing mood of fear and suspicion, in which ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘terrorist’ became all but interchangeable, President George W. Bush declared a ‘war on terror’ which would not end ‘until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated’. New only in its intensity, uninhibited demonization of Islamic fundamentalism had begun; the word ‘fundamentalist’ had become a term of abuse.

In the ensuing conflict, the world’s one surviving superpower, self-professed guardian of freedom and democracy, was pitted against an enemy that was widely perceived to be fanatical and alien. Yet, ironically, this same president who was commander-in-chief of civilization’s war on fundamentalism was chief executive of a country with the most powerful fundamentalist lobby on earth. Indeed, Bush was, in most significant respects, a fundamentalist himself.

‘Heave an egg out of a Pullman window, and you will hit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere in the United States today.’ What was true of 1920s America, as recorded by the humorist H.L. Mencken at the birth of Protestant fundamentalism, was no less true in the first decade of the 21st century. In 1990 the Reverend Pat Robertson, multimillionaire televangelist and founder of the far-right Christian Coalition, had announced, ‘We have enough votes to run this country’; it was no empty boast, and certainly no presidential candidate could afford to alienate the religious right or to disregard its deeply conservative agenda. So in September 2001 a superpower in thrall to Christian fundamentalism went to war on the elusive forces of Muslim fundamentalism.

The reactionary movement that sprang up among evangelical Protestants in the USA in the early years of the 20th century was driven initially by alarm and disgust at the reforming tendencies of ‘liberal’ theologians. These modernizers sought to interpret the bible and the gospel miracles symbolically or metaphorically, in ways that would sit more comfortably with recent social, cultural and scientific trends. In reaction to such doctrinal compromise, which seemed to threaten the centrality of divine revelation, leading conservative theologians asserted the primacy of certain ‘fundamentals’ of their faith, including the virgin birth and physical resurrection of Jesus, the strict veracity of the miracles, and the literal truth (inerrancy) of the bible. In 1920 the editor of a Baptist journal, Curtis Lee Laws, applied the name ‘fundamentalist’ for the first time to those ‘who still cling to the great fundamentals and who mean to do battle royal’ for their faith.

The devil’s good work

Fundamentalist movements have often shown an ambivalence when faced with modernity, uncertain whether to withdraw from its iniquities or to engage in order to eradicate them. Nowhere has this ambivalence been clearer than in fundamentalism’s tortured relationship with modern technology. American Christian fundamentalists denounce many aspects of science and technology as the devil’s work, but they have nevertheless displayed remarkable resourcefulness in harnessing the products of technology for their own purposes, reaching vast audiences and amassing huge funds through extensive evangelical programming on radio and television. From the mid-1990s, during their period of massively repressive rule in Afghanistan, there was the bizarre sight of the extreme Islamist Taliban coordinating their project of driving Afghan society back to the stone age by means of mobile phones. And from late 2001, after the Taliban had fallen and al-Qaeda had been ousted from its Afghan strongholds, the terrorist group made a highly effective transition to cyberspace. Suddenly the soldiers of Islam were armed with laptop as well as Kalashnikov, and internet cafés became the logistical and planning centres of the anti-Western jihad.

Heaven or hell on earth A unifying theme of different religious fundamentalisms is the conviction that there is a single, authoritative set of teachings that contain the essential and fundamental truth about God (or gods) and his (or their) relationship to mankind. The sacred text is the literal word of the deity and emphatically not open to interpretation and criticism. In the same way, the moral injunctions and codes contained within the text are to be followed to the letter. Hence, for instance, in the view of Christian fundamentalists, the Genesis account of the creation of the world is literally true and anything that conflicts with it, such as Darwinian evolution, is utterly rejected.

Trouble in your own backyard

The West has tended to display a very partial, one-eyed attitude to fundamentalism. Sensationalist reports of how Islamist suicide bombers could be motivated by the promised reward of 72 virgins in heaven are met with slack-jawed disbelief, but equally staggering excesses at home elicit much less horror and sometimes a degree of sympathy. On the face of it, there is little to choose between the motivation of a virgin-inspired suicide bomber and a fundamentalist fanatic such as Paul Hill, an affiliate of the extreme pro-life Army of God, who shot dead an abortion doctor and a clinic escort in Florida in 1994. ‘I expect a great reward in heaven … I look forward to glory,’ he announced in a statement before his execution in 2003. Indeed, research suggests that most suicide bombers are motivated less by religious dogma than by very down-to-earth economic, social and political grievances, so in terms of pure, religiously inspired fanaticism US fundamentalists may sometimes have the edge.

‘Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy … Every fundamentalist movement I’ve studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.’

Karen Armstrong, 2002

Hand in hand with religious conservatism goes social and moral conservatism, and most of the civil and political rights that have been hard won in the West over the last three centuries are categorically rejected by fundamentalists of all hues. Belief in absolute scriptural authority implies complete doctrinal dogmatism, so from a fundamentalist’s perspective, views and opinions different from their own are simply wrong, and cherished notions of Western liberalism such as cultural and religious tolerance and pluralism are anathema. Free speech, gender equality, gay rights, abortion – all are roundly condemned. The depth of such convictions was amply demonstrated by fulminating US fundamentalist and founder of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, whose immediate response after 9/11 was to blame the attacks on ‘the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians … all of them who have tried to secularize America’.

Religious fundamentalisms are often messianic or apocalyptic, anticipating the coming of a saviour and/or the end of the world. Such views often lead followers to believe that they enjoy a special and privileged relationship with God, and they may withdraw from society, where non-believers and non-fundamentalists are seen to temporarily hold sway. Others, however, have aspired to political domination, with the aim of imposing a system of government informed by their own views. They reject the separation of state and religion promoted by Western secularism and attempt instead to re-sacralize the political sphere. Elitist and authoritarian, fundamentalists typically wish to topple democratic institutions and to establish theocratic rule in their stead.

the condensed idea

When faith becomes fanatic