SMH.com: In the name of God
Nima Hazini
In the Name of God
Religion has once again become a force that no government can safely
ignore. Fundamentalism has suffered defeats, but it is by no means
quiescent. Karen Armstrong writes on religion.
One of the most startling developments of the late 20th century has been
the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety
popularly known as "fundamentalism". Its manifestations are sometimes
shocking. Fundamentalists have gunned down worshippers in a mosque,
killed doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics, shot their
presidents and even toppled a powerful government.
It is only a small minority of fundamentalists which commit such acts of
terror, but even the most peaceful and law-abiding are perplexing
because they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive
values of modern society. Fundamentalists have no time for democracy,
pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech or the
separation of church and state.
Christian fundamentalists reject the discoveries of biology and physics
about the origins of life and insist that the Book of Genesis is
scientifically sound in every detail. At a time when many are throwing
off the shackles of the past, Jewish fundamentalists observe their
revealed law more stringently than ever before, and Muslim women,
repudiating the freedoms of Western women, shroud themselves in veils
and chadors. Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists both interpret the
Arab-Israeli conflict, which began as defiantly secularist, in an
exclusively religious way.
Fundamentalism, moreover, is not confined to the great monotheisms.
There are Buddhist, Hindu and even Confucian fundamentalisms which also
cast aside many of the painfully acquired insights of liberal culture,
which fight and kill in the name of religion and strive to bring the
sacred into the realm of politics and national struggle.
This religious resurgence has taken many observers by surprise. In the
middle years of the 20th century it was generally taken for granted that
secularism was an irreversible trend and that faith would never again
play a major part in world events. It was assumed that as human beings
became more rational, they either would have no further need for
religion or would be content to confine it to the immediately personal
and private areas of their lives. But in the late 1970s, fundamentalists
began to rebel against this secularist hegemony and started to wrest
religion out of its marginal position and back to centre stage.
In this, at least, they have enjoyed remarkable success. Religion has
once again become a force that no government can safely ignore.
Fundamentalism has suffered defeats, but it is by no means quiescent. It
is an essential part of the modern scene and will certainly play an
important role in the domestic and international affairs of the future.
We cannot be religious in the same way as our ancestors in the premodern
conservative world, when the myths and rituals of faith helped people to
accept limitations that were essential to agrarian civilisation. We are
oriented to the future, and those of us who have been shaped by the
rationalism of the modern world cannot easily understand the old forms
of spirituality.
We are not unlike Newton, one of the first people in the Western world
to be wholly imbued by the scientific spirit, who found it impossible to
understand mythology. However hard we try to embrace conventional
religion, we have a natural tendency to see truth as factual, historical
and empirical. Many have become convinced that if faith is to be taken
seriously, myths must be shown to be historical and capable of working
practically with all the efficiency that modernity expects. An
increasing number of people, especially in Western Europe, which has
experienced such tragedy during the 20th century, have rejected
religion. For those who see reason as providing the sole path to truth,
this is a principled and honest position. As scientists would be the
first to insist, rational logos cannot address questions of ultimate
meaning that lie beyond the reach of empirical inquiry. Confronted with
the genocidal horrors of our century, reason has nothing to say.
Hence, there is a void at the heart of modern culture, which Western
people experienced at an early stage of their scientific revolution.
Pascal recoiled in dread from the emptiness of the cosmos; Descartes saw
the human being as the sole living denizen of an inert universe; Hobbes
imagined God retreating from the world, and Nietzsche declared that God
was dead: humanity had lost its orientation and was hurtling toward an
infinite nothingness.
But others have felt emancipated by the loss of faith, and liberated
from the restrictions it had always imposed. Sartre, who acknowledged
the God-shaped hole in modern consciousness, argued that it was still
our duty to reject deity, which negated our freedom. Camus believed that
rejecting God would enable men and women to concentrate all their
attention and love upon humankind. Others put their faith in the ideals
of the Enlightenment, looking forward to a future in which human beings
will become more rational and tolerant; they venerate the sacred liberty
of the individual instead of a distant, imaginary God. They have created
secularist forms of spirituality which bring them insight, transcendence
and ecstasy, and which have developed their own disciplines of mind and
heart.
Nevertheless, a large number of people still want to be religious and
have tried to evolve new forms of faith. Fundamentalism is just one of
these modern religious experiments and, as we have seen, it has enjoyed
a certain success in putting religion squarely back on the international
agenda, but it has often lost sight of some of the most sacred values of
the confessional faiths.
Fundamentalists have turned the mythos of their religion into logos,
either by insisting that their dogmas are scientifically true, or by
transforming their complex mythology into a streamlined ideology. They
have thus conflated two complementary sources and styles of knowledge
which the people in the premodern world had usually decided it was wise
to keep separate.
The fundamentalist experience shows the truth of this conservative
insight. By insisting that the truths of Christianity are factual and
scientifically demonstrable, American Protestant fundamentalists have
created a caricature of both religion and science. Those Jews and
Muslims who have presented their faith in a reasoned, systematic way to
compete with other secular ideologies have also distorted their
tradition, narrowing it down to a single point by a process of ruthless
selection. As a result, all have neglected the more tolerant, inclusive,
and compassionate teachings and have cultivated theologies of rage,
resentment and revenge. On occasion, this has even led a small minority
to pervert religion by using it to sanction murder. Even the vast
majority of fundamentalists, who are opposed to such acts of terror,
tend to be exclusive and condemnatory of those who do not share their
views.
But fundamentalist fury reminds us that our modern culture imposes
extremely difficult demands on human beings. It has certainly empowered
us, opened new worlds, broadened our horizons and enabled many of us to
live happier, healthier lives. Yet it has often dented our self-esteem.
At the same time as our rational world view has proclaimed that humans
are the measure of all things, and liberated us from an unseemly
dependence upon a supernatural God, it has also revealed our frailty,
vulnerability and lack of dignity. Copernicus unseated us from the
centre of the universe and relegated us to a peripheral role. Kant
declared that we could never be certain that our ideas corresponded to
any reality outside our own heads. Darwin suggested that we were simply
animals, and Freud showed that, far from being wholly rational
creatures, human beings were at the mercy of the powerful, irrational
forces of the unconscious, which could be accessed only with great
difficulty. This, indeed, was demonstrated by the modern experience.
Despite the cult of rationality, modern history has been punctuated by
witch-hunts and world wars which have been explosions of unreason.
Without the ability to approach the deeper regions of the psyche, which
the old myths, liturgies and mystical practices of the best conservative
faith once provided, it seemed that reason sometimes lost its mind in
our brave new world.
Modernity has been beneficial, benevolent and humane, but it has often,
especially in its early stages, felt the need to be cruel. This has been
especially true in the developing world, which experienced modern
Western culture as invasive, imperialistic and alien. Particularly in
some Muslim countries, the modernisation process was very different and
difficult. In the West, it had been characterised by independence and
innovation; in Egypt and Iran, it was accompanied by dependence and
imitation, as the Muslim reformers and ideologues were acutely aware.
This would alter the tenor of modernity in these countries.
It has been hard for some Westerners, who no longer think in a religious
way, to appreciate this resurgence of faith, especially when it has
expressed itself violently and cruelly. Frequently, modern society has
become divided into "two nations": secularists and religious living in
the same country cannot speak one another's language or see things from
the same point of view. What seems sacred and positive in one camp
appears demonic and deranged in the other. Secularists and religious
both feel profoundly threatened by one another, and when there is a
clash of two wholly irreconcilable world views, as in the Salman Rushdie
affair, the sense of estrangement and alienation is only exacerbated.
Fundamentalism is not going away. In some places it is either going from
strength to strength or becoming more extreme. What can the liberal,
secular establishment do to build bridges and avert the possibility of
future battles?
Suppression and coercion are clearly not the answer. They invariably
lead to a backlash and can make fundamentalists or potential
fundamentalists more extreme. Repression has bitten deeply into the
souls of those who have experienced secularisation as aggressive and has
warped their religious vision, making it violent and intolerant in its
turn. Fundamentalists see conspiracy everywhere and are sometimes
possessed by a rage that seems demonic.
And yet, attempting to exploit fundamentalism for secular, pragmatic
ends is also counterproductive. Sadat courted the Muslims of Egypt and
wooed the Jamaat al-Islamiyah (the student Islamist organisations that
developed in Egypt in the 1970s) to give legitimacy to his regime and
build his power base. Israel supported Hamas initially, as a way of
undermining the PLO. In both cases, the attempt to manipulate and
control recoiled tragically and fatally on the secularist state. A more
just and objective appraisal of the meaning of these religious movements
must be sought. It is important to recognise that these theologies and
ideologies are rooted in fear. The desire to define doctrines, erect
barriers, establish borders and segregate the faithful in a sacred
enclave where the law is stringently observed springs from that terror
of extinction which has made all fundamentalists, at one time or
another, believe that the secularists were about to wipe them out.
The modern world, which seems so exciting to a liberal, seems Godless,
drained of meaning and even satanic to a fundamentalist. If a patient
brought such paranoid, conspiracy-laden and vengeful fantasies to a
therapist, he or she would undoubtedly be diagnosed as disturbed. The
pre-millennial vision, which views some of the most positive
institutions of modernity as diabolic, harbours genocidal dreams and
sees humanity as rushing towards a horrific end, is a clear indication
of the dread and disappointment which modernity has inspired in many
Protestant fundamentalists. We have seen the nihilism that can inform
the fundamentalist program. It is impossible to reason such fear away or
attempt to eradicate it by coercive measures. A more imaginative
response would be to try to appreciate the depth of this neurosis, even
if a liberal or a secularist cannot share this dread-ridden perspective.
Second, it is important to realise that these movements are not an
archaic throwback to the past; they are modern, innovative and
modernising. Protestant fundamentalists read the Bible in a literal,
rational way that is quite different from the more mystical, allegorical
approach of premodern spirituality. Khomeini's theory of Velayat e-Faqih
was a shocking and revolutionary overturning of centuries of Shi'ite
tradition. Even ultra-orthodox Jews, who seemed resolutely to turn their
backs upon modern society, found that their yeshivot were essentially
modern, voluntarist institutions. They adopted a novel stringency in
their observance of the Torah and learnt to manipulate the political
system in a way that brought them more power than any religious Jew had
enjoyed for nearly two millennia.
Throughout, we have seen that religion has often helped people to adjust
to modernity. Shabbateanism, Quakerism, Methodism and Islamic mysticism
helped Jews, Christians and Muslims prepare for major change and gave
them a context in which they could approach the new ideas. Muslims also
developed an appreciation for such modern ideals as the separation of
religion and politics by means of the dynamic of their own spirituality.
In Europe secularism and scientific rationality were first seen as new
ways of being religious.
Some of the more recent movements have also been modernising. Hasan
al-Banna, Shariati and even Khomeini all sought to bring Muslims to
modernity in an Islamic setting that was more familiar to them than the
imported ideologies of the West. Islamic reformers would site the
pragmatic tasks of government within a religious and mystical framework.
This was also part of the fundamentalist rebellion against the hegemony
of the secular. It was a way of bringing God back into the political
realm from which he had been excluded. In various ways, fundamentalists
have rejected the separations of modernity (between church and state,
secular and profane) and tried to recreate a lost wholeness. Religious
Zionists were "revolting against the revolt" of the secularist Zionists,
who had declared their independence of religion. They wanted to have
more God and more Torah in the Holy Land than had been possible in the
Diaspora. Khomeini and Shariati insisted that it was impossible to
exclude the sacred from politics; Qutb condemned the Godlessness of the
secularist regime in Egypt. Those who had not fully imbibed the secular
rationalism of modernity were still aware of the unseen dimension of
existence and wanted it reflected in the polity. They did not see why
that should make them less modern, though they tacitly recognised that
this would mean a break with some of the old conservative aspects of
premodern religion. The fundamentalist reformation of the faith meant
that an activism that had hitherto been seen as irreligious was
presented as crucial. Religious Zionists and fundamentalist Christians
and Muslims all insisted on the need for dynamism and revolutionary
transformation in keeping with the forward thrust and pragmatic drive of
modern society.
This battle for God was an attempt to fill the void at the heart of a
society based on scientific rationalism. Instead of reviling
fundamentalists, the secularist establishment could sometimes have
benefited from a long, hard look at some of their counter-cultures.
Shukri Mustafa's communes were a reverse image of Sadat's open-door
policy; the charitable empires created by the Muslim Brotherhood and the
practical measures taken by the members of the Jamaat al-Islamiyah threw
into harsh relief the Government's lack of concern for the poor, a
crucial value in Islam. The popularity and power of these movements
showed that the people of Egypt still wanted to be religious, despite
the secularist trend. So did the cult of Khomeini in Iran: as the
confrontation with the regime accelerated, Khomeini took on more and
more of the characteristics of the imams, providing in his own person a
Shi'itic alternative to the despotic persona of the shah, which was
clearly attractive to many Iranians. Similarly, the Jewish yeshivot
provided a contrast to the pragmatic nature of secularist education, in
a society that seemed to have cast God and his law aside. They studied
to have an encounter with the divine, not simply to acquire useful
information. When they created these alternative societies,
fundamentalists were demonstrating their disillusion with a culture that
could not easily accommodate the spiritual.
Because it was so embattled, this campaign to re-sacralise society
became aggressive and distorted. It lacked the compassion that all
faiths have insisted is essential to religious life. Instead, it
preached an ideology of exclusion, hatred and even violence. But the
fundamentalists did not have a monopoly on anger. Their movements had
often evolved in a dialectical relationship with an aggressive
secularism that showed scant respect for religion and its adherents.
Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating
spiral of hostility and recrimination.
If fundamentalists must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their
enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists
must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance and respect for
humanity which characterises modern culture at its best, and address
themselves more empathetically to the fears, anxieties and needs which
so many of their fundamentalist neighbours experience, but which no
society can safely ignore.
Edited extract from The Battle For God: Fundamentalism in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong (HarperCollins) $49.50.
iran_c...@my-deja.com
replacement for "world communism" bogeymonster. There isn't anything
"new" about the phenomena that Armstrong mentions. She's mixing up
nationalism and identity assertion with/through religion and trying to
fit a lot of very different things under the vague-but-conveniently
scary title of "fundamentalism."
In article <8u4rqe$520$1...@gnamma.connect.com.au>,
"Nima Hazini" <lotu...@wxc.com.au> wrote:
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/04/spectrum/spectrum4.html
>
> In the Name of God
>
> Religion has once again become a force that no government can safely
> ignore. Fundamentalism has suffered defeats, but it is by no means
> quiescent. Karen Armstrong writes on religion.
>
> One of the most startling developments of the late
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Nima Hazini
believe Karen Armstrong is mixing nationalism with religious identity, nor
is fundamentalism a rhetorical or polemical ploy (as asserted by some).
Fundamentalism is a very *real* phenomena and one of several responses by
certain elements in the religious traditions worldwide to modernity and the
modern world (and I would extend that to postmodernity also). Many have
analysed its presence in the global village among us, but none as poignantly
and in analytical and typological detail as the team of scholars and
specialists assembled by Martin E. Marty (University of Chicago) and R.
Scott Appleby (University of Notre Dame) for what has come to be christened
as the FUNDAMENTALISM PROJECT. The FUNDAMENTALISM PROJECT has already
produced 8 fat, thick volumes of detailed articles and monographs on the
phenomena of religious fundamentalism wordlwide spanning traditions from
Christianity to Islam and Judaism to fundamentalist responses in the South
Asian and Far Eastern traditions. In the 1st volume of the Fundamentalism
Project: *FUNDAMENTALISMS OBSERVED* (Chicago: 1991), the editors have
identified 9 common typologies of fundamentalism. To wit,
1) It mounts a protest against the marginalization of religion in
secularizing societies.
2) It selectively reshapes the religious tradition (i.e. it may represent
itself as a restatement of the essence of the religion, but in fact it picks
and chooses from the tradition) and it accepts some aspects of modernity
while rejecting others.
3) It sees the moral world as divided sharply into good and evil.
4) It emphasizes the absolutism and inerrancy of its scriptures (and thus
rejects Western critical academic scholarship on that corpus).
5) It has a millennialist emphasis.
6) It has an elect, chosen membership.
7) It draws sharp boundaries between the saved and the sinful.
8) It maintains an authoritarian, charismatic leadership structure.
9) It has strict behavioral requirements for its people.
In the 1st volume (872 pages plus index), which is the only one I've been
able to read cover to cover so far, just to demonstrate the diversity of
the phenomenon globally, the following essays appear:
1. North American Protestant Fundamentalism - Nancy Ammerman
2. Roman Catholic Traditionalism and Activist Conservatism in
the United States - William Dinges and James Hitchcock
3. Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America - Pablo Deiros
4 . Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Jews The Case of the
Haredim - Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman
5. Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism - Gideon Aran
6. Fundamentalism in the Sunni Arab World - John O. Voll
7. Activist Shiism in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon - Abdulaziz A. Sachedina
8. Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia - Mumtaz Ahmad
9. Organized Hinduism: From Vedic Truth To Hindu
Nation - Daniel Gold
10. Fundamentalism and the Sikh Tradition - T.N. Madan
11. Fundamentalist Movements in Theravada Buddhism - Donald Swearer
12. Islamic Resurgence in Malaysia and Indonesia - Manning Nash
13. The Search for Roots in Industrial East Asia: The Case of the Confucian
Revival - Tu Wei-ming
14. Fundamentalism in Japan: Religious and Political - Winston Davis
15. Conclusion (volume 1): An Interim Report on a Hypothetical Family -
Marty/Appleby
Btw, I have done a very brief review of this work on amazon.com.
To move on, in another important work on the fundamentalist phenomena in
Christianity, Judaism and Islam, i.e. _The Defenders of God: The
Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age_ (Columbia SC: 1995),
Professor Bruce B. Lawrence of Duke University (Religious Studies) points
out that,
Fundamentalism is the affirmation of religious authority as holistic and
absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction; it is expressed
through the collective demand that specific creedal and ethical dictates
derived from scripture be publicly recognized and legally enforced (p. 27).
Earlier he pointed out,
Fundamentalism is shaped both by its interaction with modernity and its
reaction against modernism. It is a two-way, not a one-way, exchange. It
affects "secular humanists" as well as their fundamentalist opponents. And
it is an exchange that has taken place, and continues to take place, on a
global scale, drawing into its orbit all religious traditions not just Islam
[Judaism or Christianity] (p xiv).
Later on he notes,
...Fundamentalist challenges have arisen in several traditions. One could
locate cadres that are Sikh or Buddhist, Baha'i or Hindu (p. 6).
On pp. 100-101 Lawrence delineates the common "traits" of fundamentalists:
1. Fundamentalists are advocates of a pure minority viewpoint against a
sullied majority or dominant group. They are the righteous remanant turned
vanguard, and even when the remanant/vanguard seizes political power and
seems to become a majority, as happened in Iran in 1979, they continue to
perceive and project themselves as a minority.
2. Fundamentalists are oppositional. They do not merely disagree with their
enemies, they confront them. While the evil Other is an abstract sense of
anomie or uprootedness, it is located in particular groups who perpetuate
the prevailing "secular" ethos. Fundamentalists confront those secular
people who exercise political or judicial power. Often they also confront
"wayward" religious professionals [or percieved "wayward" scholars or
intellectuals].
3. Fundamentalists are secondary-level male elites. They claim to derive
authority from a direct, unmediated appeal to scripture, yet because
interpretive principles are often vague, they must be carried by charismatic
leaders who are invariably male. Notions of a just social order in Iran, or
a halakhic polity in Israel, or a Christian civilization in America require
continuous, repeated reinterpretation. In each instance what seems to an
outsider to be arbitrary retrieval of only some elements from a common past
is to fundamentalists the necessary restoration of an eternally valid divine
mandate. And it is a mandate mediated through exclusively male interpretors.
4. Fundamentalists generate their own technical vocabulary. Reflecting the
polysemy of language, they use special terms that bind insiders to each
other, just as they prempt interference from outsiders. Halakha for Jews,
shari'a for Muslims, [the "covenant" or "infallibility" for Baha'is], and
"creation" for Christians represent...[four]...terms, each of which would be
open to several interpretations but which fundamentalists invest with
particular meaning that exceptionalizes, even as it appears to validate,
their ideological stance.
5. Fundamentalism has historical antecedents, but no ideological precursors.
As Marc Bloch warned, one should never confuse ancestry with explanation.
Though the antecedents of fundamentalism are varied and distant - Maccabean
revolt for Jews, the Protestant Reformation for Christians, the Wahhabi
revolt for Sunnis Muslims, the martyrdom of Husayn for Shi'is -
fundamentalism as a religious ideology is very recent. It did not emerge in
Protestant America until the end of the last century. It has only become
apparent in Judaism during the last fifty years, and since it represents a
delayed reaction to the psychological hegemony of European colonial rule, it
could only occur in majoritarian Muslim countries after they had become
independent nation-states, that is, in most instances, after World War II.
So given all this, it is a rather big non sequitor (i.e. fallacy of
reasoning) to assert that fundamentalism is merely a Western boggeyman ploy
or that Armstrong and others who are studying the phenomena are conflating
or misconstruing nationalism and religious identity assertion and lumping
them all under a tenuously common rubric. For the reasons stated above, the
global phenomenon of fundamentalism is a very real one and one only need
look at the the IRI or the Taliban regime as two sore thump examples of its
presence and existence.
cheers,
Nima
<iran_c...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8u7225$pt2$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> I don't know how much I buy this idea of fundamentalism as the
> replacement for "world communism" bogeymonster. There isn't anything
> "new" about the phenomena that Armstrong mentions. She's mixing up
> nationalism and identity assertion with/through religion and trying to
> fit a lot of very different things under the vague-but-conveniently
> scary title of "fundamentalism."
>
>
>
>
> In article <8u4rqe$520$1...@gnamma.connect.com.au>,
> "Nima Hazini" <lotu...@wxc.com.au> wrote:
> > http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/04/spectrum/spectrum4.html
> >
> > In the Name of God
> >
> > Religion has once again become a force that no government can safely
> > ignore. Fundamentalism has suffered defeats, but it is by no means
> > quiescent. Karen Armstrong writes on religion.
> >
> > One of the most startling developments of the late
>
>
iran_c...@my-deja.com
question is to what extent it is REALLY responsible for all that is
being attributed to it especially in the arean of international
affairs. There is fundamentalism, and then there is "fundamentalism" -
the second is merely an ill-defined pretext. Take the Iranian
revolution of 1979 - "fundamentalism" rampant or an expression of
nationalism partially through religion? I would say the latter. There
may have been (as we all know) true fundamentalists involved in it (who
overtook it later) but the man-on-the-street was not driven by
fundamentalism, by any definition of it IMHO. Religion simply provided
the common language of dissent and assertion of identity. Also we are
told that there's something "new" about this alleged rise of
fundamentalism, but really how new is it? I seem to remember that
charges of religious fundamentalism were levelled against the rebels as
far back as the Sudanese revolt against the British empire or the
Indian revolt against the Brits too. It just seems to me
that "fundamentalism" is being touted too much as some sort of vast
international conspiracy against "the West" (aka US hegemony) thus
really fulfilling the role of the "needed enemy" - a role which
Communism once filled. Loose language and loose journalism and loose
scholarship easily blurs the line between this "fundamentalism" and
true fundamentalism.
In article <8u7p0s$882$1...@gnamma.connect.com.au>,
DariushA
>
> I don't know how much I buy this idea of fundamentalism as the
> replacement for "world communism" bogeymonster. There isn't anything
My Dear, you seem to be putting the horsey behind the carty.
Communism was only a *pause* in fundamentalism's outright
rigidity and did not last more than 75 years as a viable
force (on & off) i.e. U.S.S.R.
In fact communism _WAS_ a hope for many civilized humans
after the WWI madness to put a lid on MONGOs of the world!
BUT, Noooooo! :( It crapped out! :(
Fundamentalism propper has existed ever since a Darwinian
worm managed to acquire a couple of retinal cells to *register*
the "light" and IMMEDIATELY religion began!
'Haalaa Khar-o Beeyaar-o Baaghaali Baar Kon'! :):)
'Ennaa Allaahah Basseron Bel Tcheragh-Ghovveh'! :)
DariushA.
> "new" about the phenomena that Armstrong mentions. She's mixing up
> nationalism and identity assertion with/through religion and trying to
> fit a lot of very different things under the vague-but-conveniently
> scary title of "fundamentalism."
>
> In article <8u4rqe$520$1...@gnamma.connect.com.au>,
> "Nima Hazini" <lotu...@wxc.com.au> wrote:
> > http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/04/spectrum/spectrum4.html
> >
> > In the Name of God
> >
> > Religion has once again become a force that no government can safely
> > ignore. Fundamentalism has suffered defeats, but it is by no means
> > quiescent. Karen Armstrong writes on religion.
> >
> > One of the most startling developments of the late
>
Nima Hazini
<iran_c...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8u8971$qph$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>Fundamentalism (leaving aside the definition) is indeed real, but my
>question is to what extent it is REALLY responsible for all that is
>being attributed to it especially in the arean of international
>affairs.
You don't believe that fundamentalist ideologies such as those espoused by
the Lebanese Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Taliban state, Khomeinist
Iran, the Moral Majority in the US, the Gush Emunim, Kach and Zionist
fundamentalists in Israel and Brooklyn, etc, don't have an impact on the
international arena? If so, how do you figure that?
> There is fundamentalism, and then there is "fundamentalism" -
Which is exactly the point made by Marty/Appleby, Armstrong and Lawrence.
However, I think you are confusing religious traditionalism and conservatism
with fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is an entirely different phenomenon than
traditionalism and conservatism, and is often even opposed to traditional
expressions of religiosity, because primarily fundamentalism's language,
discourse, aim and foci are political and only secondarily religious. This
means that 'fundamentalism', properly so called, defines religion as
"ideology," in the full sense of that word, and religion itself is seen as
ideological. Let me recommend you look at categories such as "ideology" in
the sociology of knowledge especially as enumerated by people like Ralph
Mannheim in *Ideology and Utopia* and elsewhere.
>the second is merely an ill-defined pretext.
How so?
>Take the Iranian revolution of 1979 - "fundamentalism" rampant or an
expression of
>nationalism partially through religion?
Yes, but those who participated in the revolution due to nationalistic
motivated religious sentiments where not exactly Khomeinists, either.
Besides, it stands to reason that the basis of the 78-79 revolution was
hardly religious (it only became that way as the Khomeinists hijacked it),
because the majority of those who marched weren't religious, and you aren't
going to convince me that all those secular left-wing students,
sympathizers, fellow travellers, nationalists, republicans, etc, were one
and all motivated by religious sentiments. I know better...
>I would say the latter. There
>may have been (as we all know) true fundamentalists involved in it
Like Khomeini himself...
>(who
>overtook it later) but the man-on-the-street was not driven by
>fundamentalism,
Because the man on the street was not driven completely by the horizon of
his religiosity when marching against the Shah...
>by any definition of it IMHO. Religion simply provided
>the common language of dissent and assertion of identity.
A dangerous two-edged sword sort of language of dissent whereby those who
were playing with fire didn't realize at the time what flames they were
unwittingly helping to unleash, nonetheless...
>Also we are
>told that there's something "new" about this alleged rise of
>fundamentalism,
Because it is...It is a phenomenon of modernity.
>but really how new is it?
About a hundred years old in the Christian world, fifty in the Muslim at
most.
> I seem to remember that
>charges of religious fundamentalism were levelled against the rebels as
>far back as the Sudanese revolt against the British empire or the
>Indian revolt against the Brits too.
Nope, that's wrong, and I would like to see a source and citation for that
claim. Fanaticism, yes; fundamentalism, most definitely not, because as a
_technical term_ it did not even exist in the English vocabularly when the
British were fighting the Sudanese Mahdi. "Fundamentalism" is a neologism. I
think you need to re-read my last response over again.
<snip>
cheers,
Nima
rlit...@my-deja.com
I think that you are missing a vital point: fundamentalism is a
REACTION to change, therefore it is not the instigator of change, but
rather is in opposition to it, albeit a very selective opposition. I'd
imagine fundamentalists would like to keep cell phones, for example,
but limit perhaps who can use them, or the type of conversation one
could have on them.
In my opinion, fundamentalism represents a reaction to the
transformation of human society from childhood (parent-child or
authoritarian leadership) to maturity (adult-adult, representative,
consensual self rule).
Fundamentalism is to be expected and will only be overcome through the
process of achieving a balanced spiritual and intellectual maturity by
a majority of the population.
I think fundamentalism serves a real need, for it forces the individual
to make decisions, take action, one way or the other, and these are
precisely the steps one takes as one enters adulthood.
Fundamentalism is a temporary stage, like acne. Very unpleasant, but
from a historical perspective, a sign of good things to come.
Robert A. Little
In article <8u8971$qph$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
iran_c...@my-deja.com
soon I can't but in short: you're talking about the term fundamentalism
as a purely scholarly academic one, while I am talking about the
term "fundamentalism" in the sense that it is commonly thrown about, as
a codeword, or a scare word, a replacement for the codeword "communist"
which was used as a pretext for many actions and promoted in West to
promote the idea that there is some worldwide battle between
civilized "us" and crazed fanatical "them." Similarly, the word
fundamentalist is now being manipulated in the same manner. The two
forms of definitions are then mixed up together but theyre two
differnet things. And Sure, the Mahdi movement wasnt called
fundamentalist PER SE but thats not the point - whatever they were
labelled as meant in short "those crazy religious fanatics who aren't
as civilizes as us so we have ar right to go take their country" - and
today we have a new term to fulfill that definition, which
is "fundamentalist". So its not really all that new.
As for the hamas and hezbollah etc. - of course they have an effect on
the international arena but NOT because they're "fundamentalist" rather
because they're anti-Israeli. So they're fundamentalism isn't really
the relevant point.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Ciao!
In article <8u8nae$ipc$1...@gnamma.connect.com.au>,
"Nima Hazini" <lotu...@wxc.com.au> wrote:
>
> <iran_c...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8u8971$qph$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> >Fundamentalism (leaving aside the definition) is indeed real, but my
> >question is to what extent it is REALLY responsible for all that is
> >being attributed to it especially in the arean of international
> >affairs.
>
> You don't believe that fundamentalist ideologies such as those
espoused by
> the Lebanese Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Taliban state,
Khomeinist
> Iran, the Moral Majority in the US, the Gush Emunim, Kach and Zionist
> fundamentalists in Israel and Brooklyn, etc, don't have an impact on
the
> international arena? If so, how do you figure that?
> > There is fundamentalism, and then there is "fundamentalism" -
>
> Which is exactly the point made by Marty/Appleby, Armstrong and
Lawrence.
> However, I think you are confusing religious traditionalism and
conservatism
> with fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is an entirely different
phenomenon than
> traditionalism and conservatism, and is often even opposed to
traditional
> expressions of religiosity, because primarily fundamentalism's
language,
> discourse, aim and foci are political and only secondarily religious.
This
> means that 'fundamentalism', properly so called, defines religion as
> "ideology," in the full sense of that word, and religion itself is
seen as
> ideological. Let me recommend you look at categories such
as "ideology" in
> the sociology of knowledge especially as enumerated by people like
Ralph
> Mannheim in *Ideology and Utopia* and elsewhere.
>
> >the second is merely an ill-defined pretext.
>
> How so?
>
> >Take the Iranian revolution of 1979 - "fundamentalism" rampant or an
> expression of
> >nationalism partially through religion?
>
> Yes, but those who participated in the revolution due to nationalistic
> motivated religious sentiments where not exactly Khomeinists, either.
> Besides, it stands to reason that the basis of the 78-79 revolution
was
> hardly religious (it only became that way as the Khomeinists hijacked
it),
> because the majority of those who marched weren't religious, and you
aren't
> going to convince me that all those secular left-wing students,
> sympathizers, fellow travellers, nationalists, republicans, etc, were
one
> and all motivated by religious sentiments. I know better...
>
> >I would say the latter. There
> >may have been (as we all know) true fundamentalists involved in it
>
> Like Khomeini himself...
>
> >(who
> >overtook it later) but the man-on-the-street was not driven by
> >fundamentalism,
>
> Because the man on the street was not driven completely by the
horizon of
> his religiosity when marching against the Shah...
>
> >by any definition of it IMHO. Religion simply provided
> >the common language of dissent and assertion of identity.
>
> A dangerous two-edged sword sort of language of dissent whereby those
who
> were playing with fire didn't realize at the time what flames they
were
> unwittingly helping to unleash, nonetheless...
>
> >Also we are
> >told that there's something "new" about this alleged rise of
> >fundamentalism,
>
> Because it is...It is a phenomenon of modernity.
>
> >but really how new is it?
>
> About a hundred years old in the Christian world, fifty in the Muslim
at
> most.
>
> > I seem to remember that
> >charges of religious fundamentalism were levelled against the rebels
as
> >far back as the Sudanese revolt against the British empire or the
> >Indian revolt against the Brits too.
>
> Nope, that's wrong, and I would like to see a source and citation for
that
> claim. Fanaticism, yes; fundamentalism, most definitely not, because
as a
> _technical term_ it did not even exist in the English vocabularly
when the
> British were fighting the Sudanese Mahdi. "Fundamentalism" is a
neologism. I
> think you need to re-read my last response over again.
>
> <snip>
>
> cheers,
> Nima
>
>
nima_...@my-deja.com
iran_c...@my-deja.com wrote:
> While I'd like to follow up in detail, since I'm leaving on my vaca
> soon I can't but in short: you're talking about the term
fundamentalism
> as a purely scholarly academic one,
That is because "purely scholarly academic" typologies define or
describe actual phenomena in the real world.
>while I am talking about the
> term "fundamentalism" in the sense that it is commonly thrown about,
Did you even read my response?
>as
> a codeword, or a scare word, a replacement for the
>codeword "communist"
Let me go out on a limb and say that popular "scare words" and popular
perceptions thereof matter very little in the bigger scheme of things
when we are analyzing and discussing a *real* phenomenon and its
implications in the world. However, conversely it would stand to reason
that there must exist a certain phenomenon known as "fundamentalism" in
order for their to be a "euphemistic cliche" in popular perceptions, in
the first place, would it not? After all, although I am not being an
apologist for American rightwing scare mongering in the 50s, the fact
is there were *actual* communists and a Soviet Union for there to be a
Red scare in Western foreign policy in the first place.
> which was used as a pretext for many actions and promoted in West to
> promote the idea that there is some worldwide battle between
> civilized "us" and crazed fanatical "them."
Yes, the Other. But having said that, to minimize the realities of
Soviet-backed communist threats from the late 40s to the 70s is to push
creduility to the point of unreason.
>Similarly, the word
> fundamentalist is now being manipulated in the same manner.
If you had actually bothered to read Karen Armstrong's statements and
my reply to you, you would not be saying this.
>The two
> forms of definitions are then mixed up together but theyre two
> differnet things.
Did I say or suggest otherwise?
>And Sure, the Mahdi movement wasnt called
> fundamentalist PER SE but thats not the point
But you said that they were, and when I called you on it and asked you
to provide a source, you're now backtracking. The Mahdist revolt
however is not altogether irrelevant to the 'rise' of Islamic
fundamentalism in the modern world, either. While it might not be an
ideological precursor or ancestor, in many ways it did produce the
Salafi reaction in the Sunni world later on. However, from a strictly
religious point of view the Mahdists were religiously altogether
heterodox, whereas Islamic fundamentalism is many ways puritanical and
hyper-orthodox appealing while modifying and skewing the bases of
normative religious orthodoxy.
> - whatever they were
> labelled as meant in short "those crazy religious fanatics who aren't
> as civilizes as us so we have ar right to go take their country" -
And if you know anything about the history of the Mahdist revolt, they
certainly where that.
> and
> today we have a new term to fulfill that definition, which
> is "fundamentalist".
Again, there must be phenomena in the world in order for labels
describing such phenomena to exist.
>So its not really all that new.
The phenomena of "fundamentalism" is symptomatic of
modernity/postmodernity. Please read Lawrence, Armstrong and
Marty/Appleby to find out why.
> As for the hamas and hezbollah etc. - of course they have an effect on
> the international arena but NOT because they're "fundamentalist"
Oh..???
> rather
> because they're anti-Israeli.
And that you don't see their anti-Israeli stance predicated upon their
fundamentalist ideology which is foundationally different than the anti-
Israeli stances of others (including people like myself) stretches
creduility.
> So they're fundamentalism isn't really
> the relevant point.
right *cynical grin*?!
> Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Ciao!
Have fun in Thailand, visit all the sites and sounds and don't sleep
with any of the AIDS-ridden women. That's my amr-e be'l-ma'ruf va nahy
az munkar nasiyat to you.