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a central feature of American Protestant fundamentalism, which, for example, has continued to preach creationism or ‘creation science’, the belief that humankind was created by God, as described in the Book of Genesis, and the outright rejection of the Darwinian theory of evolution. Such tendencies can be found in all three ‘religions of the book’ – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – each of which possesses sacred texts that have been claimed to express the revealed word of God. Nevertheless, though often related, religious fundamentalism should not be equated with scriptural literalism. In the first place, all sacred texts contain a complex and diverse range of ideas, doctrines and principles. To treat a sacred text as a political ideology, as a moral and political programme for the regeneration of society and the mobilization of the masses, it is necessary to extract its ‘fundamentals’. These are a set of simple and clean principles that provide an exact and unambiguous definition of religious identity. In John Garvey’s (1993) words, fundamentalism constitutes ‘a kind of stripped-down religion that travels light and fast’. Second, in contrast with the ultra-orthodox, whose principal goal is to ‘live by the book’, fundamentalists have supported an ‘activist’ reading of texts that enables them to reduce the complexity and profundity of scripture to a theo-political project. In Islam, this is described as ‘dynamic interpretation’. Selectivity and interpretation, however, create the problem of how one version of a scripture or doctrine can be upheld over other versions. Fundamentalists have usually resolved this problem by reflecting on who is doing the interpreting. In this respect, clerical position and religious office may be of secondary importance; more significantly, the ‘true’ interpreter must be a person (invariably male) of deep faith and moral purity, as well as an activist whose spiritual insight has been deepened through the experience of struggle. This is why religious fundamentalism is invariably associated with charismatic leadership, which gives it, critics argue, an implicitly authoritarian character. The great strength of fundamentalism, as demonstrated by the proliferation of fundamentalist movements since the late twentieth century, is its capacity to generate political activism and mobilize the faithful. Fundamentalism thus operates on both psychological and social levels. Psychologically, its appeal is based on its capacity to offer certainty in an uncertain world. Being religious, it addresses some of the deepest and most perplexing problems confronting humankind; being fundamentalist, it provides solutions that are straightforward, practical and, above all, absolute. Socially, while its appeal has extended to the educated and professional classes, religious fundamentalism has been particularly successful in addressing the aspirations of those who feel economically and politically marginalized. Together with offering a secure identity and the prospect of social order, in the developing world in particular, it has displaced socialism as the creed of political renewal and social justice. However, among the limitations of fundamentalism is the fact that its simplicity and stripped-down character prevent it from dealing with complex problems or developing comprehensive solutions. In that sense, parallels can be drawn between religious fundamentalism and populism.
Anti-modernism The most prominent image of religious fundamentalism is that it turns its back dramatically on the modern world. Modernization appears to be equated with decline and decay, typified by the spread of godless secularism,
Theo-political: A mode of politics in which God or a deity is deemed to be the civil ruler.
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