Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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So here we have one of the most influential intellectuals of the late twentieth century insisting that fundamentalism, like terrorism, is a ‘non-subject’ conjured up by Western imperialists to discredit Middle Eastern resistance to foreign domination. Yet this same intellectual speaks of ‘varieties of fundamentalism’, thus suggesting that he believes that fundamentalism really does exist outside the intellectual factories of the West. This contradiction illustrates a basic fact: most scholars are uncomfortable with the concept of fundamentalism when used outside its original Protestant context, but they often find themselves falling back on it for lack of a better alternative – when describing conservative religious movements of which they disapprove.

In addition to the common criticism that the term fundamentalist, when used outside its original Protestant context, denigrates those who adhere to and defend the orthodox tenets of their religion, another common criticism is that the imposition of the originally Christian term fundamentalist on other religious traditions tends to force a wide variety of movements into a Procrustean model that ignores many of their distinctive features. This is in turn related to the argument that the very fact of using an originally Christian term in other religious contexts entails some degree of Christocentric distortion.

Despite such criticisms, some scholars defend the use of the term fundamentalism as a useful tool for comparative purposes. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby argue that the use of the term outside the Protestant context has become so common, in the West at least, that it would be impossible to eradicate this usage. They argue that no alternative term has been found for comparative purposes, and that comparison is essential if we wish to transcend the description of specific cases. Moreover, they argue, ‘all words have to come from somewhere’, therefore the Christian origin of the term fundamentalism is not an insurmountable obstacle so long as the comparative use of the term does not involve forcing all movements called fundamentalist to resemble Protestant fundamentalism (Marty and Appleby 1991a: viii). They insist that they do not want to force all movements into a Procrustean bed. They define fundamentalism as follows:

In these pages, then, fundamentalism has appeared as a tendency, a habit of mind, found within religious communities and movements, which manifests itself as a strategy, or set of strategies, by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group. Feeling this identity to be at risk in the contemporary era, they fortify it by a selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs, and practices from a sacred past. These retrieved ‘fundamentals’ are refined, Âmodified, and sanctioned in a spirit of shrewd pragmatism: they are to serve as a bulwark against the encroachment of outsiders who threaten to draw the Âbelievers into a syncretistic, areligious, or irreligious cultural milieu …

(Marty and Appleby 1991a: 835)

We shall see that this very broad conception of fundamentalism ignores many important distinctions among the movements Marty and Appleby describe as fundamentalist. In this essay, we shall speak of movements having a fundamentalist dimension only if they insist on strict conformity to sacred scripture and a moral code ostensibly based on it. These movements articulate moral outrage provoked by the violation of traditional religious values. This is also true of many politicized forms of religious conservatism, notably Catholic conservatism, that do not insist on strict conformity to sacred Âscripture per se.

Moreover, and this is crucial, some movements that have a fundamentalist dimension also articulate secular grievances. To focus only on their fundamentalist dimension is to ignore

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some of the principal sources of their political significance. We should not reduce moral outrage provoked by the violation of traditional religious values to a mere epiphenomenon of ethnic, nationalistic or other social grievances, but we should also avoid ignoring such grievances when the available evidence suggests that they are in fact important sources of the appeal of some movements commonly called ‘fundamentalist’.

In Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World, Gabriel Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan argue that ‘fundamentalist movements form in reaction to, and in defense against, the processes and consequences of secularization and modernization’ (2003: 93). If the rejection of the marginalization of religion is not a movement’s ‘original impulse and a recurring reference’, they argue, it is not in fact a fundamentalist movementÂ

(2003: 94). They muddy the definitional waters, however, by declaring:

In short, the threat to the religious tradition may come from the general processes of modernization and secularization, from other religious groups and/or ethnic groups, from a secular state (imperial or indigenous) seeking to secularize and delimit the domain of the sacred, or from various combinations of these.

(Almond et al. 2003: 94)

This passage blurs the important distinction between a conservative religious movement that rejects innovations that violate its traditional beliefs and a movement in which religion serves primarily as a marker of identity. In the first case, moral outrage provoked by the violation of traditional religious values is of central importance. In the second case, it is not.

Identity trumps belief: Protestant Unionism in Northern Ireland and Sikh militancy in India

If we take the case of Northern Ireland, for example, religion serves primarily as a marker of collective identity for both Catholic and Protestant, rather than as a set of beliefs to be defended in the face of secularization. This point is illustrated by the following joke. One night, a distinguished gentleman was walking down a dark alley in Belfast. Suddenly a masked man jumped out in front of him, waved a gun in his face, and asked, ‘Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?’ The terrified gentleman stammered, ‘W-w-w-well, I-I-I am actually an atheist.’ ‘Well now’, responded the gunman, with what appeared to be a twinkle in his eye, ‘would you be a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?’ Similarly, when rioting Hindus pull men’s pants down to see if they are circumcised, they are not interested in whether or not circumcised men are believing or practicing Muslims. A circumcised penis marks a man as the killable ‘Other’ regardless of what he actually believes or does. Religion serves as a distinctive marker of identity, and notably of national identity, even in the absence of belief.

There are movements in which religion serves primarily as a marker of ethnic or national identity, but which nonetheless have a clear fundamentalist dimension, in the sense that some of their most prominent adherents insist on strict conformity to sacred scripture and a moral code ostensibly based on it. Protestant Unionism in Northern Ireland, for example, is basically an expression of the fears of Protestants who are afraid of losing their identity and their rights in a predominantly Catholic Ireland. Many Unionists are in fact quite secular and only about a quarter, or at most a third, are fundamentalists (Bruce 1998: 68). Yet the fundamentalist Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) won more votes than any other party in Northern Ireland’s legislative elections of November 26, 2003. Since

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1979, Paisley has also consistently won more votes than any other candidate in Northern Ireland’s elections to the parliament of the European Union – despite the fact that Paisley has portrayed the European Union as a Catholic plot to undermine Protestantism (Bruce 1998: 63–4, 67). From May 2007 through June 2008, Paisley served as Northern Ireland’s ‘first minister’, with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness serving as deputy first minister. This is an important example of how militant fundamentalists can sometimes be induced to embrace moderate positions they once condemned. But for present purposes, the crucial point is that many non-fundamentalist Protestants in Northern Ireland regularly voted for Paisley. Steve Bruce has argued that this is because of the basic role conservative evangelicalism has played in shaping Ulster Protestant identity (1998: 73). It may also reflect Paisley’s ability to articulate Protestant concerns in an earthy, populist language everyone can understand. The important point is that Protestant Unionism is primarily about identity rather than about conformity to scripture even though its most famous leader is a fundamentalist.

The case of Protestant Unionism is strikingly similar to Sikh militancy in India insofar as its fundamentalist dimension is subordinate to its nationalist dimension. The militant Sikh movement first attracted attention in 1978, when the fiery preacher Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale led a march to break up a gathering of the Sant Nirankari sect considered heretical by orthodox Sikhs (Oberoi 1993: 273).

Bhindranwale’s movement definitely had a fundamentalist dimension to it insofar as it stressed the need for conformity to a sacred text. But Sikh militancy was primarily an ethnic and nationalist movement, with religion serving as the principal marker of Sikh identity. That is, the Sikh militants of the late twentieth century fought primarily for an independent Sikh state in the Indian province of Punjab. While Bhindranwale and his followers did condemn Sikhs who violated the traditional Sikh moral code, the primary enemy of all the Sikh militants, some of whom were more religious than others, was the state of India rather than secularism per se. The militants condemned the government of India not for being secular, but for being biased in favor of Hindus (Mahmood 1996).

Hindu nationalism

At first glance, and even second and third, the notion of ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ seems preposterous. Hinduism does not have a single sacred text to which conformity can be demanded. Another important objection to the characterization of Hindu groups such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as ‘Hindu fundamentalists’ is that conformity to a religious code of conduct is not of particular importance to them. They do speak of establishing a truly Hindu state and society, but for these people, Hinduism is above all a symbol of national identity rather than a set of rules to be obeyed (Raychaudhuri 1995).

The primarily nationalistic orientation of the Bharatiya Janata Party is reflected in its name, which means ‘the Party of the Indian People’. Similarly, the name of a related group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) means ‘the Association of National Volunteers’. In the Hindu nationalist literature, the emphasis is generally on the threat posed by Muslims and, more recently, converts to Christianity. The Hindu nationalist obsession with Muslims is reflected in the slogan ‘For Muslims, there are only two places, Pakistan or the grave’ (Musulmanan ke do-hi shtan, pakistan aur kabristan (Halliday 1995: 47).

Hindu nationalists do not stress strict conformity to sacred scripture or to a moral code based on it. It is true that members of the militant Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena have attacked billboards for a film about a lesbian relationship between two Hindu women. They

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have also vandalized stores selling Valentine’s Day greeting cards (Sengupta 2002). But by and large, puritanical insistence on conformity to a strict moral code has not been a distinctive feature of Hindu nationalism.

The activism of the people Marty and Appleby call ‘Hindu fundamentalists’ was triggered by the conversion to Islam of thousands of untouchables in southern India in the early 1980s. Coupled with the emergence of militant Sikh separatism, the resurgence of Muslim separatism in Kashmir, and the increasingly vocal demands of untouchables and lower-caste Hindus, some high-caste Hindus began to feel that their status in Indian society, and indeed the very survival of Hindu India, was at risk. This sense of vulnerability rather than a sense that divine law was being violated led to the increased political significance of the BJP and related groups in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In short, the basic impulse of groups like the RSS and the BJP is unquestionably nationalistic rather than ‘fundamentalist’.

Given the close relationship between religious and national identity in much of the world, it is not surprising that we do find a nationalist dimension in some of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim movements often called ‘fundamentalist’. But the Hindu case differs radically from Christian fundamentalism, for example. Christian fundamentalists do tend to see the United States as God’s chosen land, a ‘city on a hill.’ During the First World War, the evangelist Billy Sunday argued that ‘Christianity and Patriotism are synonymous terms’ (Marsden 1991: 51). However, late-twentieth-century Christian fundamentalism in the United States was fueled primarily by the moral outrage provoked by abortion, the banning of school prayer, feminism, gay rights, the teaching of evolution, and similar issues. Such moral issues do not dominate the rhetoric of Hindu nationalism.

Among the most salient issues associated with Hindu nationalism is that of the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and the rebuilding of the Hindu temple said to have existed on this site before its destruction by the Muslim Mughal dynasty. While there was undoubtedly some real religious fervor associated with the belief that Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram (avatar of Vishnu and hero of the Ramayana), the impact of the conflict at Ayodhya was above all a reflection of the Hindu nationalists’ emphasis on the essentially Hindu character of India and their view of Muslims as inherently alien enemies of Hindu India. The destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 led to widespread rioting in which Hindus killed several thousand Muslims.

Rather than insist on strict doctrinal purity, Hindu nationalists try to encourage Sikhs and Jains to think of themselves as Hindus despite the distinctiveness of many of their beliefs. Some Hindu militants have admittedly tried to systematize Hinduism in the manner of the Western monotheisms. One group has proposed, for example, a uniform code of conduct for all Hindus, with the Bhagavad Gita serving as the sacred text of all Hindus. But the fact remains that the defense of the Hindu community, seen as synonymous with the Indian nation, has been the main theme of Hindu militancy rather than the goal of creating a Hindu state and society based on strict conformity to Hindu religious law. Referring to Hindu nationalism as ‘fundamentalism’ is thus misleading.

This does not mean that there is no point in comparing Hindu nationalism with movements in which the insistence on conformity to a strict moral code is of primary importance. On the contrary, such comparison is indispensable insofar as it helps us understand the distinction between nationalistic movements in which religion serves primarily as a badge of national identity and movements of militant religious conservatism which are fueled primarily by outrage by the violation of traditional religious values – ‘fundamentalist’ movements being a specific kind of militant religious conservatism in which strict conformity to a sacred text

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is stressed. (Militant Catholic and Eastern Orthodox conservatism are not characterized by this insistence on strict conformity to a specific sacred text although they do focus on strict conformity to traditional religious values.) We should bear in mind that we are speaking of a continuum of movements rather than a sharp dichotomy between religiouslytinged nationalism and militant religious conservatism. As the Unionist and Sikh cases demonstrate, nationalism and militant religious conservatism are often intertwined and careful analysis is required to determine their relative weight in specific cases. That is what we shall now attempt to undertake with respect to the best-known Christian, Jewish, and Muslim movements commonly referred to as ‘fundamentalist.’

Christian fundamentalism in the United States

Fundamentalism the thing existed long before the word did. One could speak of the Maccabean revolt of the second century bce as having a fundamentalist impulse insofar as it insisted on strict conformity to the Torah and Jewish religious law (Munson 2003b). Similarly, Calvin’s sixteenth-century Genevan polity could be called fundamentalist insofar as it insisted on strict conformity to the Bible and a moral code ostensibly based on it. But the term Fundamentalist (traditionally written with an upper-case F) was only coined in 1920 by Curtis Lee Laws, the conservative editor of the Baptist newspaper The Watchman-Examiner. Laws created the word to refer to militantly conservative evangelical Protestants ready ‘to do battle royal for the fundamentals’ of Christianity (Beale 1986: 195).

Modern Christian fundamentalism emerged as a revolt against the tendency to rationalize and demythologize Protestant Christianity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In response to Protestant liberalism that watered down the basic tenets of Christianity, conservative evangelicals published a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals from 1910 to 1915. The central theme of The Fundamentals is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. That is to say that it is without error. Associated with this idea is the belief that believers should live their lives according to a strict Biblically based moral code.

Evangelical Christians believe that the Bible is the word of God, that one can only be saved from eternal damnation by accepting Jesus Christ as one’s savior, and that the Christian is obliged to ‘evangelize’, that is, to spread the ‘good news’ of Christ’s death and resurrection for the sake of humanity. The acceptance of Jesus as one’s savior is linked to the idea of being ‘born again’ through an experience of the Holy Spirit. George Marsden has described Christian fundamentalists as evangelicals who are ‘angry about something’ (Marsden 1991: 1).

In the nineteenth century, Christian evangelicals of a fundamentalist orientation (again, the thing preceded the word) had been politically active on both sides of the slavery issue, in anti-Catholic nativism, in the fight to maintain Sunday as a day of rest, and in the temperance movement. This political activism continued in the early twentieth century, with evolution becoming a major issue in the 1920s.

Some Christian fundamentalists ran for public office in the 1930s and 1940s on platforms that combined anti-Semitism, anti-communism, populism, and Christian revivalism (see Ribuffo 1983). From the 1950s through the 1970s, fundamentalist preachers like Billy James Hargis combined similar themes, minus the explicit anti-Semitism, with opposition to racial integration.

Although Christian fundamentalist ministers were active in opposing the civil rights movement and communism in the 1960s, they remained politically marginal. In 1979,