Fundamentalism

http://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/fundamentalism-10341

Fundamentalism
MUHAMMAD NURUL HUDA

THE word 'fundamentalism' has often been used and expressed in a pejorative sense. For facility of understanding can we term the embattled and frequently intolerant religiosity as fundamentalism? Are the so-called fundamentalists departing from the core values of compassion, justice and benevolence that characterise all the world faiths, including Islam? One could raise such a query as the myth of the supposed fanatical intolerance of Islam has become one of the accusatory ideas of the West.

One would be factual in commenting that the Western media often give the impression that the embattled and occasionally violent form of religiosity known as 'fundamentalism' is a purely Islamic phenomenon. This is not the reality. Fundamentalism is a global fact and has surfaced in every major faith in response to issues and problems of modernity. There is fundamentalist Judaism, fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Hinduism, fundamentalist Buddhism, fundamentalist Sikhism, and even fundamentalist Confucianism.

Historical experience shows that fundamentalism takes shape when modernisation process acquires a faster pace. During such process there are often efforts by religious people to reform traditions and effect a meeting between traditions and modern culture. However, when moderate measures are found to be of no avail, some people resort to more extreme methods, and a fundamentalist movement is born. In fact, fundamentalism was quite well established among Christians and Jews, who had had a comparatively longer exposure to the modern experience.

It would thus not be out of place and context to say that fundamentalism is an essential part of the modern scene. Fundamentalists will often register their protest and discontent with a modern development by overstressing those elements in their tradition that militate against it. Even in the United States the fundamentalists are highly critical of democracy and secularism. The fundamentalist movement strongly believes that the secular establishment is determined to wipe religion out. Such reaction is, however, not always paranoid. Experience shows that secularism has often been very aggressive in the Muslim world.