Religious Fundamentalism: Causes and Remedies

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RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: CAUSES AND REMEDIES

RELIGIOUS Fundamentalism CAUSES & REMEDIES

Dr.Fazlur Rahman*

Introduction

One of the most astounding developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety popularly known as Fundamentalism (1). Its manifestation is sometimes shocking. Worshippers are gunned down in a mosque; learned Scholars are killed in the name of religion, worship places of opponent sects have been lit to fire and war is waged against the innocent followers of other sects. Examples can be found in the demolition of the Ayudhia mosque, Christians burnt alive in India, underage children were shot dead in their parent’s arms in Israel, women were tortured and abused in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir and leaders and worshippers of different sects were murdered in Pakistan

It is only a small minority of “self righteous” or in other words “ignorant” who commit such act 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. Fundamentalist have no time for democracy, religious tolerance, peacekeeping, free speech, etc. (2)

Christian fundamentalists are unable to cope with the changing circumstances of the society 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 fundamentalist observe their revealed law more stringently than ever before and Muslim extremist still consider access of scientist to the moon impossible. In the same way they are against the modern concept of democratic systems. They content themselves merely with precedents and traditions and deny unfolding of the creative instincts of mankind. This trend, moreover, is not confined to the great monotheisms. These are Buddhist, Hindu and even Confucians, which also cast aside many of the painfully acquired insights of culture, which fight and kill in the name of religion.

This religious insurgence has taken many observers by surprise. In the middle years of the Twentieth century, it was generally taken for granted that secularism (3) was an irreversible trend and that faith would never again play a major part in the world politics. 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. (4) But in late 1970s, fundamentalists began to rebel against this secularist hegemony and started to give religion its formal 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.

Brief History

No one person can be credited with founding Fundamentalism. Nor does any single group comprise the history of the movement. The label ‘Fundamentalist’ is used as both an adjective and a noun. Accordingly, trying to understand the phenomena requires more than knowing a few names and dates. Curtis Lee Laws, editor of a conservative publication entitled Watchman-Examiner is credited with coining the term “fundamentalism.” The term ‘fundamentalism’ has its origin in a series of pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915 entitled “The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.” These booklets were authored by leading evangelical churchmen and were circulated free of charge among clergymen and seminarians. (5)

By and large, fundamentalism was a response to the loss of influence traditional revivalism experienced in America during the early liberalizing trends of German biblical criticism and the encroachment of Darwinian theories about the origin of the universe, prompted a response by conservative churchmen. The result was the pamphlets. In 1920, a journalist and Baptist layman named Curtis Lee Laws appropriated the term ‘fundamentalist’ as a designation for those who were ready “to do battle royal for the Fundamentals.” Its date of birth is the Second decade of the 20th century and its birth place is The United States. Its year of Foundation is 1920.

Its stand was that The Bible is the sacred text of the Christian Fundamentalists. Indeed, if there is one single thing which binds Fundamentalists together, it is their insistence that the Bible is to be understood as literally true. Further, Fundamentalists see themselves as the guardians of the truth, usually to the exclusion of others’ interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalism in other faith traditions similarly proclaims guardianship of truth. The size of this group depends on how fundamentalism is defined. Conservatively estimated, there are at least 30 million Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. alone. Fundamentalism stands with Pentecostalism (6) as the most successful religious movements of the 20th century.

Problems in Analyzing Fundamentalism

One can hardly read a weekly news magazine without encountering the term ‘fundamentalist’ with reference to some group active on the world stage. In fact, the popularity of the term is part of the problem. Several scholars have noted the difficulty inherent in using an imprecise term like ‘fundamentalism’ to describe groups as different as the Christian Coalition and the Nation of Islam. Jeffrey K.

1-tadden has identified four types of fundamentalism:

• Theological fundamentalism was the Christian theological movement concerned with defending traditional Christian doctrine against modern thinking.

• Political fundamentalism is a combination of theological fundamentalism and the personal commitments of religious adherents to combat worldly vices. Manifestations of political fundamentalism include much of the activity in the temperance movement or the virulent anticommunism of Gerald L.K. Smith. Political fundamentalism suffered a major setback by their defeat at the Scopes Monkey trial. (7)

• These two types of fundamentalism melded together to combine a caricature of culturally unenlightened individuals bent on preserving tradition at the expense of progress. This cultural fundamentalism was cynically portrayed by social critics such as H.L.Mencken and novelists such as Sinclair Lewis. William Jennings Bryan served as the prototype for Mencken after the debacle of the Scopes trial in Tennessee. The political activity engaged in by fundamentalists invited comparison to other religiously motivated groups around the world.

• Accordingly, global fundamentalism as a phenomenon denotes many religiously motivated politically active groups existing in a variety of religious traditions and political systems. (8)

Defining Fundamentalism

It has also been argued that this Christian term cannot be accurately applied to movements that have entirely different priorities. Muslim and Jewish fundamentalist, for example, are not much concerned with doctrine, which is an essentially Christian preoccupation. A literal translation of fundamentalism into Arabic gives us usuliyah, a word that refers to the study of the sources of the various rules and principles of Islamic Law. (9) Most of the activist who are dubbed “fundamentalists” in the West are not engaged in this Islamic science, but have quite different concerns. The use of term “fundamentalism” is, therefore, misleading. Given the many disparate uses of the concept, it is not surprising that fundamentalism has not been easy to define. Several recent works are helpful in developing a conceptual understanding of the phenomenon. Three important works are examined here:

Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age. Lawrence defines fundamentalism as: “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.”(10)

Lawrence argues that fundamentalism is a specific kind of religious ideology. It is anti-modern, but not anti-modernist. In other words, it rejects the philosophical rationalism and individualism that accompany modernity, but it takes full advantage of certain technological advances that also characterize the modern age. The most consistent denominator is opposition to Enlightenment values. Lawrence believes that fundamentalism is a world-wide phenomena and that it must be compared in various contexts before it can be understood or explained with any clarity. Lawrence ends his general discussion by listing five “family resemblances” common to fundamentalism.

• Fundamentalists are advocates of a minority viewpoint. They see themselves as a righteous remnant. Even when they are numerically a majority, they perceive themselves as a minority.

• They are oppositional and confrontational towards both secularists and “wayward” religious followers.

• They are secondary level male elites led invariably by charismatic males.

• They generate their own technical vocabulary.

• Fundamentalism has historical antecedents, but no ideological precursor.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences funded a multiyear project that brought scholars from around the world together to study fundamentalism. Ultimately they produced 5 volumes containing almost 8,000 pages of material. Admitting some difficulty with the term, the project opts to use it anyway for a variety of reasons. Essentially, they argue that it is commonly accepted, here to stay, and the best term anyone can come up with for this phenomenon. The last chapter of volume l, “Fundamentalisms Observed”, discusses the “family resemblances” found in the various chapters. These family resemblances include:

• religious idealism as basis for personal and communal identity;

• they understand truth to be revealed and unified;

• it is intentionally scandalous, (similar to Lawrence’s point about language -- outsiders cannot understand it);

• they envision themselves as part of a cosmic struggle; they seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in light of this cosmic struggle;

• they demonize their opposition and are reactionary;

• they are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage they stress;

• they are led by males;

• they envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the distribution of power.(11)

The last several chapters of the final volume, “Fundamentalism comprehended” attempt to delineate several properties of fundamentalism with the research of the previous 7,500 pages in mind. Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, and Gabriel Almond list five ideological characteristics and four organizational characteristics of fundamentalism. The Five ideological characteristics are:

• they are concerned “first” with the erosion of religion and its proper role in society;

• fundamentalism is selective of their tradition and what part of modernity they accept or choose to react against;

• they embrace some form of dualism;

• they stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of revelation; and

• they opt for some form of Millennialism or Messianism.

The organizational characteristics include:

• an elect or chosen membership;

• sharp group boundaries;

• charismatic authoritarian leaders; and

• mandated behavioural requirements. (12)

At about the same time that the Fundamentalism Project was getting underway, Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe in their “Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered” offered the following definition of fundamentalism: “It is a proclamation of reclaimed authority over a sacred tradition which is to be reinstated as an antidote for a society that has strayed from its cultural moorings.”(13)

Hadden and Shupe note that fundamentalists refute the split between sacred and secular that characterizes modernist thinking. It also involves a plan to bring religion back to centre stage in public policy decisions. As the “Fundamentalism Project” makes clear, in every corner of the world and in every major faith tradition, there are groups identified by some as fundamentalists. Hadden and Shupe argue that fundamentalism is an attempt to draw upon a religious tradition to cope with and reshape an already changing world. The question arises: What changes are so world wide that a reactive movement like fundamentalism can be found anywhere in the world? The answer, according to Hadden and Shupe, is globalization.

The range of religious responses to globalization explains fundamentalism’s global presence. Hadden and Shupe argue that around the world there is a “common process of secularizing social change.” This process contains “the very seeds of a reaction that brings religion back into the heart of concerns about public policy. The secular….is also the cause of resacralization… [This] often takes fundamentalist forms “years of the twentieth century. This loss of influence, coupled with the liberalizing trends of German biblical criticism and the encroachment of Darwinian theories about the origin of the universe, prompted a response by conservative churchmen.

Islam and Fundamentalism

One cannot understand the whole state of affairs until and unless he recognises the standpoint of Islam about its relation with the state. Islam is a religion, and like other religions, is transcendent, ineffable; no form can continue or exhaust it. Like other religions it has been expressed in many forms- artistic, intellectual, mystic, but more than some other, social. In fact, Islam is characterised among the religions by the particular emphasis which it has from the beginning given to social order. The Prophet Muhammad (SAW) not only preached ethics, he organised a state. Indeed, Islamic history is calculated to begin not on the year when the Prophet was born, not when he began to receive Divine revelations, but when the Muslim Community came to power in a State of its own.

The 1 A.H. marks the establishment of Islam as a religio-political sovereignty in al-Madina. The State was organized in accordance with God’s revelation; it prospered and expanded and Islam as a process in human history was launched on its career. That carer was continued until today, with human ups and downs, many variations of fortunes and form, many vicissitudes, both of achievement and of aspiration but never vary far from its central theme has been its concern with itself as an organized community. There are many illustrations of this fact; one is the superlative importance in Islam of the Law.

Islam has been social gospel from the beginning. Major sectarian differences in Islam have been concerned with divergences not primarily over dogma but over questions as to how the community should be organized. While the Protestants seceded from the Catholic Church on a point of doctrine, the Shi’a seceded from the majority community on a dispute regarding political leadership. Islam is by tradition and by central genius a practical religion, a religion of ethics, including social ethics, and of organized, legalized ethics (14). It is a way of life that enables each individual to attain the highest possible development of his spiritual, moral, physical and intellectual faculties. Its function is to establish and maintain the most harmonious relationship between man and his maker on the one hand and between man and man in al spheres of their relationship on the other. Politics is one aspect of the relationship between man and man. To sum up it may be said that Islam is not a Sunday suit which can be put on when we enter a place of worship and put off when we are dealing with day to day life.

The west label the new wave of political resurgence in the Muslim World as fundamentalism, fanaticism, anti-Westernism, Islamic militancy, anachronism and such other value loaded expressions. It appears that the West is once again committing the fatal mistake of looking upon others belonging to a different paradigm, from the prism of its own distorted categories of thought and history. This increases the divide between the two people and interjects the observer’s own fear into it. What shows through this hate campaign is that while Archbishop Makrios of Cyprus, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Cardinal Mendzeti, popes and Cardinals can be in politics, and political parties in Europe may be named as Christian Democrats, it is only the mixing of Islam in politics that is objectionable to the West. (15)

No correct understanding of the current situation is possible if it is delinked from its historical background. Those who attribute “Islamism” to anti-Westernism hold that the starting point of their analysis should be the immediate past and not its historical nexus. John L Esposito is one of them. He writes: “For many, the contemporary revival of Islam challenged the received wisdom and seemed to deal a death blow to reason and common sense... In a very real sense, Islamic revivalism has often been seen and experienced as a direct threat to the ideas, beliefs, practices and interests of Muslim secularist elites as well as Western governments, and multinationals. The clash of world views has reinforced the Western tendency to see Islamic activism as extremism and fanaticism, as an anti-modern return to the past.”(16)

This narrow angle distorts their view of “Islamism” because it ignores the Muslim sense of humiliation during the colonial domination of their lands and the West continual exercise in unfairness towards them. The chain of actions and reactions should be studied from January 17, 1991 onwards and specifically after 9/11 to determine the events which generated certain developments among the Muslim peoples. Also, their reactions are determined by their perceptions of the recent history, which they consider humiliating. Without exception, their independence has been restrained through invisible hands, forcing them to follow the West through imposed Muslim leadership. This has given rise to anti-colonial feelings and anti-Westernism must be understood first, for Muslims equate West with colonialism.

To begin with, it will be useful if the chain of actions and reactions is viewed in the context of a conflict between the colonials and the Muslim peoples. The colonies were ruling the Muslims from distant lands. The fact that the West was Christian and its acquired territories were predominantly Muslim is not trivial and has to be seen in the perspective of a historical rivalry between the social systems of the two opposite peoples. What is remarkable though is that the Muslims did not extend the conflict to the local Christians. Ignoring this perspective could lead to wrong conclusions. The colonial powers adopted certain religious and cultural offensives in their colonies, which varied with areas under their occupation.

In South Asia, the “mutiny” against foreign rule, nominally led by the last Mughal emperor in 1857-58, left a legacy for a sullen resentment in the Muslims against the British rulers. The Muslims were ruthlessly suppressed. Sir Syed Ahmad’s the” Causes of the Indian Revolt” (in Urdu) and Sir William Hunter’s Indian Muslims(17) show how the Muslims were mercilessly removed from all important slots in political power and services by the British after “the mutiny”. The Balfour Declaration of Nov 2, 1917 and the creation of Israel were considered by the Muslims as religiously motivated plans. Harold Wilson, a former British Prime Minister, in fact confirmed that: “Western Christian countries felt that supporting Israel’s creation was part of their commitment to the Bible.”(18)

After independence, direct foreign rule was withdrawn, but it was quite clear that now this control was exercised through indirect means. No leader was to be tolerated if he became strong enough to pursue a reasonably independent policy, or sought self reliance. Nasser, Ghaddafi, Saddam were dealt with either directly or through proxies. It seemed as if “a red line” existed somewhere, which was not to be crossed by native rulers. It is a strange coincidence that the two sponsors of the Islamic Summit, King Feisal and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, came to tragic ends. Iranian revolution was weakened through Iraqi-Iranian war from September 1980 to August 1988; and Yasser Arafat was tamed through Israeli raids into Lebanon in 1982.

Today the situation is not changed. In his book, Seize the moment, Richard Nixon wrote: “Many Americans tend to stereotype Muslims as uncivilized, unwashed, barbaric, irrational people.... No nation, not even Communist China, have a more negative image in the American consciousness than those of the Muslim World...Some observers warn that Islam will become monolithic and fanatical geo-political force,...will pose a major challenge and that the West will be forced to form a new alliance with Moscow to confront a hostile and aggressive Muslim World.” (19) In the same tone, John L Esposito, in his Islamic Threat writes: “As Western leaders attempt to forge the New World Order, transnational Islam may increasingly come to be regarded as the new global monolithic enemy of the West.” (20) P.L. Buchanan goes one step further and writes,” To some Americans searching for a new enemy against whom to try our mettle and power, after the death of Communism, Islam is the preferred antagonist.”(21)

Broadly speaking, to the West any manifestation of Muslim nationalism even within the confines of their states is equal to Islamic threat to its existence. Interestingly, the Muslim idea of what the West means by Islamic “fundamentalism” is off the mark. They seem to be under a false impression that the West use of the term implies “religious fanaticism” or “bigotry”. This has focused their debate on a narrow angle, while unfortunately in the Western power elite; it has become a new hate word” for Islam and Islamic societies, with political and strategic implications. Obviously there is a perception gap. The Muslim elite and commoners have hardly any idea that the West uses this word for carrying on an offensive against Islam itself. The people in general in the West are equally innocent of the broth their establishment is cooking.

One can easily find the perception of the elite of the West about Islam in the recent report of Cheryl Bernard on “Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and strategies”, where a detailed strategy for “democratising Islam” is laid down (22). Interestingly the term “fundamentalism” is singularly applied for Islam and the Muslims. In preface one can find the objectives of the report as: “The Islamic World is involved in a struggle to determine its own nature and values, with serious implications for the future. What role can the rest of the World, threatened and affected as it is by this struggle, play in bringing about amore peaceful and positive outcome? In this regard three goals of US are mentioned:

• It wants to prevent the spread of extremism and violence;

• In doing so, it needs to avoid the impression that the United States is “opposed to Islam”;

• In the longer run, it must find ways to help address the deeper economic, social and political causes feeding Islamic radicalism and to encourage a move towards development and democratization. (23)”

Conclusion

With the “fundamentalist” dark designs especially over the Muslim and generally the remaining world, one may ask if we can counter these designs. Do we really have options? Muslims can surrender, as some pro-West circles propose. But this would hardly find support among the masses, for this means a semi-independent Muslim World (in fact they are). The case for economic benefit, as touted by a certain Pakistani circle, can be analysed in the light of the past. The US itself is likely to be mired in economic difficulties from now onwards. And must we remain in the beggars club? Confrontation is not the order of the day as it will not find a sympathetic chord abroad, in the OIC, UN or elsewhere. A combination of firmness with pragmatism without compromising on vital issues, we should seek independence through self-reliance and creative diplomacy. We can summarise the remedial strategy in “Five” points:

1. We must proceed courageously and sort out such a common strategy on the basis of which a new era of peace can be initiated, like guarantee of sovereignty, freedom and geographical integrity of all the nations. Islam had put forwarded this principle to the globe in past. This principle can uproot the roots of imperialism

2. Pluralism is a threat for the global peace. It means the hegemony of one state or civilisation. Every nation-state has the right to maintain and preserve its own culture and value system.

3. All the burning issues be solved through dialogue. Use of power may be confined in the light of universal law and justice. Awareness against all sort of suppression is the need of the day. There is a need of differentiation between ‘terrorism’ and ‘self determination’.

4. A just global judicial system can provide ground for global peace;

5. International cooperation on common issues can lead the globe towards just and peaceful distribution of wealth, happiness, solidarity and dignified life.

Dialogue is the only solution of peaceful existence. And this is already felt hard in Europe now. After absorbing the blow of Sep11, some Roman Catholic Cardinals in Europe want to enlist Muslims as future allies against a challenge confronting both their religions--- the godless nature of modern life. Now some cardinals, are stressing the need to work with, not against, what is the second religion in much of Europe. They also see this as a contribution to peace both at home and in the Islamic world. “Christians and Muslims who live together should try to meet and dialogue” said Milan Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi recently, “to refute the talk about a clash of civilization”. He urged Italians to get to know the Muslims in their midst.

His was all the more urgent because faith was under siege, said Brussels Cardinal Godfried Daneels. Many church pews are empty in Europe as people turn to spiritual fads, secularism or simple indifference to religion altogether. “There is only one important thing in the church and in the world, that’s to keep alive the idea of God and the spiritual nature of the human being and the world,” he said last week.

Europe, Christianity’s heartland, is now home to about 15 million Muslims whose very public loyalty to their faith makes Catholic leaders envious.The rise of militant Islam has added a suspicion and fear of Muslims that strains everyday relations. But Venice Cardinal Angelo Scola, who has just launched a magazine about Christian-Muslim understanding, sees Europe as the region where two religions will finally come to know and appreciate each other. “The challenge of dealing with Islam will be played out in Europe,” he said last month.” This is part of the mixing of civilizations. We have to join this process and accompany it.”

London Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Corner said that there was little opportunity for such dialogue in predominantly Muslim countries. He hoped dialogue in the West would “increase and make in roads” in Islamic countries (24). All this need determination and will power for both the religions. Muslim Ummah cannot play any role in the globe until and unless it learn lesson from the past mistakes and change its behaviour altogether in the light of the teachings of Qur’an and Sunnah.

References

1. It is debatable whether militancy in various world religions can be classified as fundamentalism, extremism, ignorance or the trend of self righteousness. The term is misunderstood and misinterpreted by the media and politically misused in such a large scale that one becomes confused in allocating it the right place.

2 Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (London: Harper Collins, 2000), p.ix

3. The term” secularism” has its root in the Latin word seaculum, meaning present age. Its represent- ness can be construed as an obverse of other worldliness, which may or may not exist, or a new age implying a process of history that distances the present from the past- a relativity of values that emerge with every new move in history. But whatever may be its connotations, secularism is exceedingly old almost deserving to be called decrepit. Primarily hostile in its temper toward revelation based religions (as they are holistic), it has fed primitive animistic faiths, priestly classes, dynastic kingships and today’s scienticism. (See for detail, Tarik Jan, “secularism the new ideology” in Pakistan between secularism and Islam (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1998), p.3

4. How much was that assumption logically true can be traced in the writings of Phillip K.Hitti. He says, “…The behaviour of the so-called advanced nations during the last two wars waged on a scale unknown in history; the ability of Western man to let loose these diabolic forces which are the product of his science and his machine and which now threaten the world with destruction; and with particular relation to the Near East, the handling of the Palestinian problem by America, England, France and other nations ---all worked together to disillusion this man of the Near East who has been trying to establish an intellectual rapprochement with the West. It is these actions of the West which alienate him and shake his belief in the character of the Western man and his morality on both the private and public level.” Phillip K. Hitti, Islam in Modern World as is quoted by Prof.Khurshid Ahmad in New World Order: Western Fundamentalism in Action (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1995), p.5

5. Steven Jones, Fundamentalism (Virginia: University of Virginia, 1998) [database online]; available from http://religiousmovements.lib.virqinia.edu/nrms/fund.html, downloaded on 9/9/04.

6. Charismatic religious movement that gave rise to a number of Protestant churches in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries and that is characterized by the belief that air Christians should seek a post conversion religious experience called the baptism with the Holy Spirit. This experience corresponds to the first outpouring or descent of the Holy Spirit upon the 12 disciples of Christ assembled in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 1:12-2:4, and it is accompanied by the same sign: the gift of glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues”. Pentecostals also hold that a Spirit-baptized believer may receive at least one of the other supernatural gifts that were known to have been in existence in the early church--the ability to prophesy, to heal, or to interpret what is said when someone speaks in unknown tongues. Beyond these unique distinctions, Pentecostal churches reflect those patterns of faith and practice characteristic of the Fundamentalist-Holiness branches of Protestantism that also originated in 19th-century America, with their emphases of biblical literalism, conversion and moral rigour. Despite a common belief in certain doctrines, such as baptism of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, and healing, Pentecostals have not united in a single denomination. [1994-2001 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. C CD-ROM)]

7. Highly publicized trial of a Dayton, Tenn., high-school teacher, John T. Scopes, charged with violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution. In March 1925 the Tennessee legislature had declared unlawful the teaching of any doctrine denying the divine creation of man as taught by the Bible. World attention focused on the trial proceedings, which promised confrontation between fundamentalist literal belief and liberal interpretation of the Scriptures. William Jennings Bryan led for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. The judge ruled out any test of the laws constitutionality or argument on the validity of Darwin’s theory, limiting the trial to the single question of whether or not John T. Scopes had taught evolution, which he admittedly had. He was convicted and fined $100. On appeal, the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1925 law but acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been fined excessively. The law was repealed in 1967.

8. Steven Jones, op.cit.

9 Abdel Salam Sidahared & Anonshiravan Ehtishani(ed) Islamic Fundamentalism (Boulder, CoIo, 1996).p.4

10. Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age. (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990), p.78

11 Martin R. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.) “Fundamentalism Observed” The Fundamentalism Project Vol: I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).pp. 854-888.

12. Ibid. “Fundamentalisms comprehended’ The Fundamentalism Project. Volume 5. pp. 495-528

13. Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe “Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered” as quoted by Steven Jones, op.cit.

14. G.W.Choudhury, “The Islamic Concept of State” in Constitutional Development in Pakistan (London: Longman Group LTD, n.d), pp.39-41.

15 Dr.S.M.Koreshi, Western Fundamentalism in Action (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1995) p.194

16. John L Esposito, The Islamic Threat (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) p.10

17. W.W.Hunter, The Indian Musalmans (Lahore: Sang e Meel Publications, 1999)

18. Harold Wilson, chariots of Israel (London: George weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd., 1981) p.7

19. Dr.S.M.Koreshi, op.cit. p.191

20. John L Esposito, Islamic Threat, p.5 as is quoted by Dr.S.M. Karachi, op.cit, p.191

21. B.L. Buchanan, “Is Islam an enemy of the US.” Sunday News (New Hampshire),December 22, 1990

22. Cheryl Bernard, Civil Democratic Islam, Partners, resources and Strategies (Santa Monika: Rand Corporation, 2003) [database online]; available from RAND URL: http://www.rand.org/

23 One can easily analyse the engagements of US in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Middle Last in the context of these goals.

24. Reuters as reported in the Daily DAWN, Islamabad, April14, 2005.

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Related Questions

Brief History

Problems in Analyzing Fundamentalism

Defining Fundamentalism

Islam and Fundamentalism

Conclusion