Beware! All Fundamentalists Look Alike
By Dr Shakil Akhtar Rai
Los Angeles California
The term ‘fundamentalism’ and the militant religious phenomenon it refers to are American innovations from the early 20th century. Originally the term described the conservative Evangelical Protestant movement in America that insisted on the literal reading of the Bible and rejected modernity as a whole, and modernist theories of biblical criticism. It follows that when scientific evidence demonstrates that the earth is round and it revolves around the sun, it should be rejected because the Bible says otherwise; hence the Flat Earth Society. When asked ‘Why do you say the earth is flat, when the vast majority says otherwise?’ The answer on their webpage is “because we know the truth.’ And the ‘truth’ is that ‘the world is static, the fixed center of the Universe. The sun, planets and stars all revolve around it…’
‘Flat earth’ may be an extreme case of ‘fundamentalist truth’ yet it reveals some basic characteristics of all fundamentalists who are jostling for power to establish the hegemony of their exclusive ‘truth’. This mindset of being the exclusive repository of truth in all fields leaves no room for argument.
‘Fundamentalism’ is pejorative term and is now applied to a vast variety of religious movements across the globe. This one-size-fits-all approach makes it inevitable that it has to be a loose-fit. All popular and scholarly discussions about fundamentalism express their reservations regarding the applicability of this term to a given social phenomenon, and yet the term is employed with zest by all.
Fundamentalism is raging in almost all major religions of the world - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Despite the fact that fundamentalist movements are very different in approach and ‘truthfulness’ of their message they share a good deal of common characteristics.
They all reject and deplore modernity and its capitalistic, industrial, and scientific progress, and yet make use of the same tools of technological advancement to argue against it.
Their invariable first reaction to a scientific innovation is rejectionistic, and once it becomes widespread and accepted by the general public they too embrace it without repudiating their initial stance of rejection. The case in point is television, and man’s landing on the moon.
Once they accept these modernist scientific inventions, they take a step further to claim that their holy scriptures, in fact, had foreseen it. From the same book which they used earlier to claim that the invention was sinful, they quote verses this time to prove that this particular invention was foretold. Spherical shape of the heavenly bodies, their revolution, and man’s ability to reach them are some of the cases.
Most of them start as a non-political movement and claim that they are only trying to improve general morality of the public; pretty soon they are seen jockeying for political power. American evangelicals are today one of the most powerful political groups on the national political chessboard. They have exercised unprecedented influence in the decision making in the current Administration.
Despite their growing political clout in the given polity and their wheeling dealing for political power they continue to reject politics as something unbecoming of a pious person. The ulema in Pakistan had declared electoral politics as un-Islamic and stayed out of it till 1970 when they feared that the Jamaat-e-Islami because of its earlier acceptance of electioneering was emerging as the sole spokesman of Islam. They all jumped into this pool of hitherto un-Islamic Western-created world of politics. Once they entered electoral politics they have come to stay, and conveniently forgotten that it was something they had vehemently rejected earlier. In the case of Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, the rejection of politics was even more deeply ingrained for theological reasons. And yet they are there in parliaments and city councils pursuing their peculiar politics.
If they feel they cannot achieve their objectives through peaceful political means they readily resort to militancy. They go for bombing abortion clinics, killing civilians indiscriminately, barring people of color from schools and buses, evicting people from their homes at gun point, and demolishing historical monuments; all in the name of religion and God, and without any qualms of conscience. This is happening from the USA to Israel, to India, to Pakistan, and to Indonesia.
Violence is natural to them, and peaceful co-existence with tolerance of difference of opinion, religion, and even race in some cases is anathema to them.
They have a self-serving view of a ‘golden age’ and history seems to have come to an end there. They refuse to accept that Time, an eternal verity, which is only next to God Almighty, who is above time and space, has made any difference in human advancement.
We are headed toward the age of faith it seems, after living through the aggressiveness of secularism in the previous century. Let’s try to keep our balance; we the Muslims are the Ummah of moderation and balance, and should be able to maintain that tradition and ideal.
