Religious Fundamentalism Research Paper

Religious fundamentalism, often confused with conservatism or traditionalism, is a name for a movement in any religion that retrieves “fundamental” elements of that religion and projects them into new formulations in reaction to challenges from modernity, however that is defined. This reaction may lead to protective withdrawal by groups in some cases, at least in early stages. In practice, however, leaders of such movements attract followers to engage in militant action against whatever it is they regard as a profanation or whatever stands in the way of their battles for their God. Since fundamentalisms appear in Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam, they can be seen as both local and global assaults on both secular and settled religious orders, be they conservative or liberal.

Problems with the Word “Fundamentalism”

Scholars agree that the first use of the term occurred in American Protestantism early in the twentieth century. Some question, therefore, whether the word might fairly, and without causing confusion, be used to characterize forces in other religions. On the side of the critics are factors such as these: it seems unfair and perhaps imperial to borrow from an American domestic movement a term to impose on other religious movements that draw on vastly different sources. Second, the term is often seen as pejorative, stigmatizing. In addition to that, it does not always have a cognate term in the languages identified with other religions. Fourth, it may license comparisons that unfairly lump together disparate movements that lose their identity when so classified.

Over against these, defenders of the usage recognize that the term is simply established, in textbooks and media, in statecraft and scholarship, and argue that efforts are better aimed at clarifying the term than trying to abolish it. In addition, they point out that similar categories of words travel from language to language, situation to situation. Words like colonialism, revolution, conservatism, nationalism, and others are all “born” somewhere in the West and travel to other settings and languages. Third, fundamentalism is a genus, and scholars or communicators can clarify issues by pointing to species: the Islamic fundamentalism of the Wahhabi movement might have formal congruence with the Jewish fundamentalism of Gush Emunim or a party of Protestants in Northern Ireland, but the content of their claims differs vastly. Finally, no other term has come forward to foster comparative analysis. Thus “Islamist” works only for Islamic movements. And comparisons are valuable, since only by isolating them do certain features stand out.

Features of the Fundamentalist Movements

The word “fundamentalism,” in religious contexts at least, is not to be found in any dictionaries published before the 1920s. When Baptist Protestants in the United States during intradenominational struggles in the early 1920s coined it, and when Presbyterians took it up, lexicographers had to take note of it and defined it as a Protestant movement devoted to biblical literalism. What they may not have noticed is that in the same decades such movements were developing in India in what have become major political parties, or in Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, from which fundamentalisms spread to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the larger Islamic world.

World historians have it as their mission to account for the long record of movements, and ask about the distant origins of fundamentalism. But students of the movements will find that they rose as reactions to modernity, again “however defined.” Definitions may, for instance, take into account critical assaults on sacred canons, such as the Bible or the Qur’an. When conservatives perceive these as assaults from within their religious camp, they feel they must react and respond. Thus Muslim fundamentalists from the 1920s to the 1990s almost always directed their fire to what they perceived, not always inaccurately, to be corrupt and repressive but only nominally Muslim governments. American Protestant fundamentalists did not have the old enemy of Protestantism, Catholicism, as an object of attack so much as rival groups that were religiously “closer to home.” They attacked their fellow Presbyterians or Baptists for treason to their own cause. The critical movements that inspired the responses developed just before the twentieth century or early in it, so one could not have located and defined fundamentalism without this modern assault.

Just as often, the reactive response may be against perceived threats to one’s domain. Thus “Westerners” as “infidels” were seen to be subverting Iran in the 1970s, thus evoking purifying countermovements by the followers of the Shi’a Ayatollah Khomeini. Fundamentalists in the United States felt called to oppose liberal Protestants allied with secular humanists and others who were critical of cherished practices such as issuing prayers in public schools while these critics provided theological justifications for disapproving moral expressions, for example, the legalizing of abortions. In Israel, if there seemed to be even a trace of conciliation by peace-seeking governmental administrations, movements like Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) organized, demonstrated, and built not-yet-approved settlements on the West Bank.

To pursue their aggressive missions in the name of God, fundamentalist movements must build at least figurative boundaries around their movements. They may not keep outsiders or compromisers at a physical distance, as sectarians were able to do before the rise of mass media, mass higher education, and global commerce. But they can develop their own media of communication, their own separatist institutions, their own sets of stigmas with which to label the moderates or other deviators. In media especially, their difference from conservatives or traditionalists is most apparent: they embrace the very modern instruments of communication—tapes, videos, radios, films, the Internet—that were agents of assaults against them. They fight modernity with modern technology.

Their spiritual weapons need ammunition. They all find it in shared sacred texts, usually from centuries before, from times that they perceive to have been perfect or that offered prototypes for living in a perfected world. From these they select the elements that will most help them fight off modernity; these become “the fundamentals.” They need strategies, which can range all the way from attempts at boycotting or demonstrating, from efforts at amending constitutions to revolution and warfare—and, in the end, in some cases, terrorism in the name of God. With these self-confident moves, which they experience or claim to be God-guided, they are certain about where history is going, however long it takes.

Fundamentalisms have to be efficient; what are called “free riders” and others who are only half-committed are unwelcome. Participants have to be ready for total sacrifice of self. So they will pursue most zealously the group members they perceive as compromisers, people who should know better but who are too ready to barter too much away. Thus an American Protestant fundamentalist chronicler named the evangelist Billy Graham the most dangerous American of the last century—because, he claimed, Graham knew better than to appear on platforms with others who do not share all details of fundamentalist faith.

Finally, fundamentalists need all-or-nothing ideologies. Scholars speak of these as “Manichaean,” after a dualistic religious movement: dark opposes light, with no shadows between them; it is God versus Satan, Christ versus Antichrist, Allah versus the infidels. There is no room for ambiguity or compromise in the minds of individuals or in the approach of the group as a whole.

Still problematic to the student of world history is the claim that since the movements developed in reaction to modernity, including the experience of religious pluralism and the often accompanying tendency to relativize “truth,” is it not true that many religious movements had to fight off their own “modernities” long ago? Thus New England Puritans abhorred the very idea of “innovation,” and promoted the old ways. If this is the case, would not one have to begin the story of any modern religious fundamentalism by looking at precedents and antecedents through history? Thus Hindus and Muslims have had to fight off modernisms in many generations. Protestant fundamentalists bear some resemblances to Anabaptist or sectarian movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So what is new?

The Place of Fundamentalisms

American Protestant fundamentalism, for one instance, fights its battles in the context of a republic where political means are accessible. Resorting to violence is extremely rare. Exceptions such as the bombing of abortion clinics by radical fundamentalists are criticized by mainstream fundamentalists, who find their movements set back by such violence. They may express resentment against a modern world that they believe is depriving them of their rightful place. After that, their energies go into political organization, attempting to persuade voters, to gain power with holders of office, to employ mass media to make their case.

In the United States it is hard to remain a “pure” fundamentalist. To gain anything in a republic a movement must enter into coalitions, make alliances, swallow some principle for a common cause. Or one may turn to more moderate movements that are religiously satisfying in respect to message though less attractive in their cultural roles. Fundamentalists have been in the public eye since the Scopes trial, a battle over evolution in public schools in 1925. Many people on all sides have been nettled, unsettled, angered, frightened lest their cause be defeated, but they have not had to fear guns.

In Israel one of the very rare fundamentalist movements was Gush Emunim. It was a very modern force, organized under charismatic rabbis who agitated in America and in Israel especially against Israeli leaders who even entertained the idea of coming to terms with the Palestinians. Many in this “Bloc of the Faithful” were offspring of barely observant Jews who in their new turn “went all the way” into and beyond Orthodoxy. Members make claims that they are relying on ancient sacred texts in which the land of Israel was given, with stipulated and precise boundaries, to the people of Israel, the Jews. They find support from and kinship with American Protestant fundamentalists and their slightly more moderate kin who read biblical passages “fundamentalistically” in order to certify and sustain their support of Israel.

In India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organized what many Hindus call a cultural, not a religious institution. Maharashtrian Brahmans developed it within Hinduism and it became a base for militant opposition to equally militant Muslims. The two hard-line groups fought over sites that were holy to both. The RSS is an ideology of the Hindu nation. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, founder of the movement, now a party, wanted to purge India of non-Hindu influences. It is highly organized in order to stimulate emotional response to Hindu appeals and to stand off the Muslims. Many Indians welcome talk of a Hindu nation, but memories of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi by RSS people makes them uneasy. And the RSS did teach people to use Western instruments, including weaponry. The RSS literature suggests a sense of embattledness, but the leaders have taught ordinary members to take out their rage on Muslims, who crowd what they think of as uniquely Hindu holy places.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt under the leadership of Hasan al-Banna’ (1906– 1949), a moralist who was repulsed by moral and spiritual corruption in Egypt and wanted to use the resources of Islam to counter it. The Brotherhood organized schools and hospitals, and became a very vocal critic of semisecular or nominally Muslim governments there. Most influential in the Brotherhood was Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), a former secularist who turned to be a zealous Sunni Muslim leader. He abhorred what he saw in the United States, which looked corrupt, sensual, immoral, and godless. Qutb was executed by the Egyptian government for his subversion, but his version of Wahhabi Islam thrived, especially in Saudi Arabia. It is out of this tradition that the al-Qaeda movement emerged.

Best known to the West has been the Iranian revolution of 1979. It serves as a model of how fundamentalist movements make their way. The United States–backed Shah of Iran presided over a corrupt regime. As population grew and needed resources were not available to all but the upper classes, resentment developed among young urban males. So did aspiration and hope. After the shah fell, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini came back from Paris to reoccupy the land that his followers felt had been immorally taken over from them. Soon the shah had to flee, the Khomeini faction grew in power and threat, the United States retreated, and a new pattern of militant, revolutionary unrest followed. Whether they are called fundamentalist or not, movements like the RSS and the Muslim Brotherhood illustrate how the forces develop.

They begin as conservative or traditionalist complexes. They are oppressed (not all fundamentalists are literally poor, though many are desperately so). Their enemy is seen as a corrupt betrayer of the tradition they believe is theirs. No matter what the world thinks, they must act. Allah will bless them now or, more likely, in eternity. And they will have made a contribution to purifying and ennobling an often corrupt and repressive regime. Something similar goes on in fundamentalist movements elsewhere, and in different religions.

As for the future, militant fundamentalisms are likely to continue to create upheavals of a sort unanticipated at the end of the Cold War. They resort to terrorism or destabilize regimes. At the same time, others run their course and settle for somewhat moderated expressions. In almost every major religious complex—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and the like—nonviolent fundamentalists will seek to make their way through efforts to convert others, to out-vote them, or to influence public policy through means and toward ends that they find satisfying. And “modernism” in its many forms, including with its manifestations of pluralism and relativism will remain the enemy.

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