The Fundamentalists
First shown on Channel 4 in September 2006
Mark Dowd
Mark Dowd travels across the world to trace the origins of fundamentalism and find out how it developed into the global phenomenon it is today. He discovers fundamentalists of all religious persuasions across the world – Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and, unexpectedly, Buddhists. Julia Bard reports
The USA
Today the word 'fundamentalist' conjours up images of suicide bombers but its origins are in the American Bible Belt. Here, in the aftermath of the First World War, when science and social patterns were changing fast, traditionalist Christians attempted to impose biblical standards on their society. Despite the official separation of church and state, Christians who believed in the literal truth of the Bible – including the story that the world was created in seven days – brought charges against John Scopes for teaching evolution.
That battle is still going on. The fundamentalist Christians have proved that they can deliver votes for Republican candidates and today the influence of powerful evangelical Christians on US politics has grown beyond anyone's expectations. Today the separation of church and state is struggling to survive.
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says that today fundamentalism has a more menacing face; that anger against the world which is seen in black and white terms of good and evil becomes dangerous when allied with political power.
Mark Dowd describes Jerry Falwell as the most influential preacher in the USA. After the Ayatollahs came to power in Iran and the word 'fundamentalism' began to be strongly associated with Islam, his Moral Majority movement started to describe themselves as 'evangelical' instead. He and other american Christian fundamentalists believe that God is on their side and they see their mission as spreading the gospel and recruiting new Christians. A new 9/11 edition of the Bible with an American flag on the cover is distributed all over the world.
Author Karen Armstrong argues that to claim, as the fundamentalists do, that 'God is on your side' is to nationalise and provincialise God, which is blasphemy.
India
India is a secular democracy; it has a vast population with a mosaic of beliefs and religions. This, together with the diversity within Hinduism, the majority religion, should make India a bastion against fundamentalism, says Mark Dowd.
Like other parts of the world, though, India has not escaped the potent combination of nationalism and religion exploding into violence. Here the spark was the conflict over the Ayodhya, which Hindus believe to be the birthplace of Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu.
In 1992, Hindu fundamentalists tore down the mosque at Ayodhya, a monument to India's first Muslim emperor, Babar who invaded India in 1528, demolished many temples and is believed to have killed many thousands of Hindus.
The destruction of the mosque in 1992sparked terrible riots which left around 2,000 people dead. No one has been brought to justice and the Hindus involved continue to defend their actions. Even though the injustice done to Hindus to which they are responding happened 500 years ago, they say that they are defending themselves and have as much right to do so as the USA.
Now they are fundraising in the Indian diaspora, collecting money to buy bricks to build a new temple on the site. But the bricks are stacking up while the authorities ponder on whether to allow the temple to be built, and risk a violent riposte from Muslims, or forbid the building project and risk a backlash from Hindus.
Like all manifestations of fundamentalism, this version of Hinduism intertwines religious belief with nationalism and identity. As a result, its adherents feel that a criticism of the religion is an attack on their very being, and this is used to justify a violent response.
A critic says that, far from adhering strictly to the ancient teachings of Hinduism, the cultural supremacists have thrown the non-violent Hindu tradition out of the window.
Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka 70% of the people are Buddhists. It is 2,550 years since the death of Buddha, who taught his followers to seek enlightenment and spiritual development rather than material gain. Many young men take monastic vows and devote their lives to studying his teaching. But in Sri Lanka, some militant monks have a distinctly 21st century interpretation of Buddhism.
Sri Lanka is in the throes of a recurring civil war being fought out between the secular Tamil Tigers and government military forces. Hardline nationalist monks who are allies of the country's president, are violently opposed to demands for an independent homeland for the Tamils, some of whom are Hindu and some Christian. They believe that Buddha visited Sri Lanka and argue that the Tamil Tigers are a threat to the country's Buddhist tradition. These radical monks argue that this justifies them fighting on the front lines along with the army.
Though there are many Buddhists, including monks, who oppose the hardliners, the peace lobby in Sri Lanka is led by people with a secular mindset, who have not adequately addressed the concerns of believers. These concerns include the impact of globalisation on societies that have, until recently, been sheltered from outside influences. An anthropologist explains that many people feel that their cultural identity is under attack – that their sense of being Sinhalese or Tamil or Buddhist is being downgraded.
The new breed of radical monks are so determined to protect Sinhalese culture that they are proposing an anti-conversion law, to counteract the appeal of new proselytising Christian groups that offer food, money and material possessions to people. There are also police reports of dozens of attacks on churches.
It is hard to grasp the idea of Buddhists being fundamentalists but if fundamentalism is the intense politicisation of religion, then these extreme nationalist monks certainly come into that category.
The Middle East
Many people consider the word 'Islam' to be synonymous with extremism but the term 'fundamentalism' was not applied to Muslims until the Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the Shah of Iran in 1979. The harsh monarchy was replaced with a Shi'ite Muslim regime, despite centuries during which Shi'a Islam strictly separated politics and religion.
This break with tradition has parallels in fundamentalism in other religions. Far from being the strict return to a literal interpretation of the religious texts, as it claims, Muslim fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon which seeks political, social and economic power.
The fundamentalists argue that Shariah law is incompatible with western values. Liberal Muslims, though, say that Muslims should embrace democracy and find fellowship with different faiths.
In Israel and Palestine the politicised versions of religion are expressed violently by both Muslims and Jews. A Jewish settler living in the West Bank – territory occupied by Israel – says she used to have contact with her Arab neighbours, but no longer. She says: 'Now they want to kill us. I don't understand why.' It's not difficult to understand the hostility of the Palestinians, who have lived there for generations, since she is living on their land. But she and the other ultra-religious settlers believe that according to the Bible, this land was given to the Jews by God.
More mainstream Jews reject this literal reading of the sacred texts, saying that applying them to complex, modern-day problems without any interpretation is destructive. What is more, they say, it breaks from the long Jewish rabbinic tradition of rereading, re-interpreting, discussing and re-evaluating the holy texts.
Beyond this, there are secular Israeli Jews, like the feminist TV presenter, who believes that Israel's occupation of other people's land is making the state do terrible things. It is also provoking some Palestinians into taking extreme actions. Some describe themselves as Jihadists, who are struggling not just for their land and against the occupation, but are fighting a battle between truth and falsehood, good and evil.
A modern phenomenon
Although fundamentalists in all religions claim that they are harking back to a golden age when everyone accepted the divine words of the holy texts, this is clearly not the case. Even if we found the idea appealing, and if there ever really were such a golden age, we couldn't reproduce it in the 21st century.
In fact, as these examples from five major world religions show, fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon that has as much to do with today's global politics and economics as with the religious sources. This marriage of religion with politics has touched many nerves. In the developing world, it appears to offer food to the hungry and power to the powerless. In wealthy countries, it appears to give confidence to minorities who are persecuted or discriminated against, and has been used by those in power to wage war against 'non-believers'.
The longer this goes on, the more polarised the world becomes. Where, asks Mark Dowd, are today's prophets to help people identify with the fears of others, and check the tide of fundamentalism.
