In each of us there lurks a fundamentalist. Fundamentalists 
are not a discrete species but time and chance may 
throw them up in any culture. Indeed,
 the term was coined to denote 
Christians who insisted on 
absolute Bible truth.

In general, one may say that the fundamentalists are young, poor and urban, and that they are products of modernization and in particular of urbanization and the great educational expansion which that has allowed. They are a more coherent social group than these books show. Fundamentalism is an attractive formula for them because it has resonances from the traditional society of their upbringing and a programme for success in the modern world. In different times, socialism, facism, communism or even liberalism might have charmed their minds, and may yet do so, but fundamentalism is the currently fashionable alternative to the tired Western-style programme of the existing elite.

Fundamentalism as it is solely attributed to Islam now has its attractive and its unattractive features. As one old Algerian, quoted by Claire Spencer in Islamic Fundamentalism, put it, "their mosques are full, but their hearts are empty". There is something repellent about the arrogant and ruthless enthusiasms of the young, and some satisfaction in observing that their prescriptions work so poorly. After eighteen years of Islamic revolution in Iran, the Islamic State has no Islamic foreign policy or economic policy, and its political system staggers unsteadily back towards a more conventional arrangement. If it were not for the remarkable flexibility shown by its leaders and the almost inexhaustible supply of young men coming forward, one would expect the fundamentalist storm to blow itself out in the near future. More likely, it will continue for some time. In the mean time, the temporizing policy of Hussein of Jordan and Hassan of Morocco, mixed with the resolute repression of violence characteristic of Egypt and Syria, may be the best ways to buy time.

Fundamentalism - a few short decades ato, this was no more than a minority movement within Protestantism. How things have changed! Bruce B. Lawrence, a commentator on religion, wrote that 30 years ago, few would have foreseen that at the end of the 20th century, fundamentalism would become such an important and even obsessive theme for the mass media and university research.

Yet, that is what has happened. Newspaper reports of violent street demonstrations, mureders, antiabortion movements, political maneuverings by religious pressure groups, and public bonfires of books considered blasphemous are constant reminders of the actions of fundamentalists. The Italian financial weekly Mondo Economico stated that just about everywhere fundamentalism is "on the attack in the name of God."

Fundamentalists are often portrayed as extreme and fanatic, hatching conspiracies and carrying out terrorist attacks. People are alarmed at the growth of such groups as Comunione e Liberazione in Roman Catholicism, Gush Emunim in Judaism, and the Christian Coalition in North American Protestantism. Why fundamentalism spreading? What motivates it? Is it perhaps "the revenge of God," as French sociologist Gilles Kepel suggests?

Where did fundamentalism start? At the end of the last century, liberal theologians were changing their beliefs to accomodate higher criticism of the Bible and scientific theories, such as evolution. As a result, people's confidence in the Bible was shaken. Conservative religious leaders in the United States reacted by fixing what they called the fundamentals of faith. Early in the 20th century, they published a discussion of these fundamentals in a series of volumes entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. From this title comes the term "fundamentalism".

In the first half of the 20th century, fundamentalism made news from time to time. For example, in 1925, religious fundamentalists took a schoolteacher named John Scopes of Tennessee, USA, to court in what became known as the Scopes trial. His crime? He was teaching evolution, and that was against state law. In those days, some believed that fundamentalism would be short-lived. In 1926, Christian Century, a Protestant magazine, said that it was "hollow and artificial" and "wholly lacking in qualities of constructive achievement or survival". How wrong that assessment was! Since the 1970's the fundamentalism has constantly been in the news. Professor Miroslav Volf, of Fuller Theological Seminary, California, USA, says: "Fundamentalism has not only survived, but also flourished."

Today, the word "fundamentalism" applies not only to Protestant movements but also to those in other religions, such as Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism.

Why the spread of fundamentalism? Those who study it attribute it, at least in part, to the moral and religious uncertainty of our times. In earlier years most societies lived in an atmosphere of moral certainly based on traditional beliefs. Now those beliefs are challenged or rejected. Many intellectuals assert that there is no God and that man is alone in an indifferent universe. Many scinetists teach that mankind is the resylt of chance evolution, not of the actions of a loving Creator. A permissive mentality prevails. The world is plagued with a loss of moral values on all levels of society. - 2 Timothy 3:3, 5, 13.

Fundamentalists hanker after the old certainties, and some of them strive to bring their communities and nations back to what they feel are proper moral and doctrinal foundations. They do all in their power to force others to live according to a "correct" moral code and system of doctrinal beliefs. A fundamentalist is strongly convinced that he is right and others are wrong. Professor James Barr, in his book Fundamentalism, says that fundamentalism "is often felt to be a hostile and opprobrious term, suggesting narrowness, bigotry, obscurantism and sectarianism".

Since nobody likes to be called narrow, bigoted, or sectariann, not all agree on who is a fundamentalist and who is not. There are, however, certain aspects that characterize religous fundamentalism.

Religious fundamentalism is usually an attempt to preserve what is believed to be the original traditions or religious beliefs of a culture and to oppose what is perceived as the secular spirit of the world. That is not to say that fundamentalists oppose all that is modern. Some use modern communication very effectively to promote their point of view. But they fight against the secularization of society.

Some fundamentalists are determined not only to preserve for themselvess a traditional structure of doctrines or way of life but to impose these on others, to change social structures so that they conform with fundamentalists' beliefs. The Catholic fundamentalist, therefore, will not limit himself to rejecting abortion. In Poland, according to the newspaper La Republica, in order to have an antiabortion law approved, the Catolic Church conducted "a'war' in which it deployed all its power and influence". In doing so, the church authorities were acting very much like fundamentalists. The Protestant Christian Coalition in the United States fights similar "wars".

Fundamentalists are distinguished above all by their deep-rooted religious convictions. Thus, a Protestant fundamentalist will be a convinced proponent of the literal interpretation of the Bible, likely including the belief that the earth was created in six literal days. A Catholic fundamentalist has no doubt about the infallibility of the pope.

It is understandable, then, why the term "fundamentalism" evokes the image of unreasoning fanaticism and why those who are not fundamentalists are uneasy when they see fundamentalsim spreading. As individuals, we may disagree with fundamentallists and be appalled by their political maneuverings and their sometimes violent actions. Indeed, fundamentalists of one religion may be horrified at the actions of those of another religion! Still, many thinking people are concerned about the things that provoke the pread of fundamentalism - the growing moral laxity, the loss of faith, and the rejection of spirituality in modern society.

Is fundamentalism the only repsonse to these trends? If not, what is the alternative? (The Watch Tower March 97)

Much of the appeal of the fundamentalists derives from thir efforts to reform the world, especially through their social and educational work. Islamic fundamentalism began in the 1920s in the form of societies devoted to such activities, the most notable being the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It was only later that these societies began to turn their attention to politics, and social and educational work, especially among poor immigrants to cities, has always remained an important element in their operations. The emphasis placed by many fundamentalists on Islam as a religion for the poor and oppressed may, like the liberation theology of Catholic priests in South America, derive partly from this work. The defence of the socially deprived has been a particular theme of the Shi'i fundamentalists in Iran and Lebanon, but it is also a conspicuos concern of Sunni fundamentalists. Better known, of course, is the fundamentalists' attempt to eradicate certain features of modern life which they associate with the West: cinemas, night-clubs, drink, drugs, dancing; and to promote a modest style of life and dress and reduce sexual temptation by separating the sexes. It is these last, almost cosmetic features of their activities which have attracted the greatest notice and diverted attention from their far-reaching aims to modernize and reorganize the State.

I t will be observed that the largest part of the work of the fundamentalists is non-violent, and in several countries they have built a solid platform through their social and educational work from which they have ventured with some success into the limited political life of Muslim states. In the past ten years, fundamentalist political parties have attracted electoral support of around 20 per cent in Turkey, Tunesia and Sudan, have demonstrated their strength in Egyptian elections, and would almost certainly have won the 1992 election in Algeria if it had not been cancelled. In Turkey, they are now the largest single party, in Iran they have been a component in the ruling fundamentalist/traditionalist coalition, and in Sudan they share power with the army. This is an impressive performance, but it receives little attention by comparison with the activities of the violent fundamentalist groups.

Certainly there is no peculiar disposition of Muslims towards fundamentalism. In his brilliant comparison of Islam in Indonesia and Morocco, the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz showed how beneath the superficial samenesses of Islam there are concealed quite different attitudes, beliefs and values. Islam resembles the Internet in being a vast system of elementary communication within which innumerable networks, enabling closer but still limited communication,exist.

Starting from this viewpoint, it is useful to look at the experiences of Muslims who contemplated the West in a time before the term "Islamic fundamentalist" was heard. The overwhelming impression is of the variety of the responses of individuals, differences only partly explained by time and circumstances; and the range of their views of the lessons to be learned from the West by their own societies. All were impressed by the the power and wealth of the West, by its pursuit of science and zest for knowledge for its own sake, by its economic enterprise and by some features of political organization and principles of freedom, equality and fraternity. Later travellers, while continuing to admire these features, tended to dwell also on darker aspects of Western life - what they saw as materialism, aggressiveness, excessive individualism - and increasingly came to regard the West as an enemy. As to the implications for their own societies, their prescriptions varied: most regarded the West as a giant bazaar in which other cultures could shop, selecting only those items they thought appropriate and rejecting others. Only the blind Egyptian educationalist, Taha Huasyn, argued that for better or worse Muslims should take all that the West offered, lock, stock and barrel.

One could classify the range of Middle Eastern reactions to the West into four groups. The first group adopted the bazaar approach: take form the West the models that suit and leave the rest alone; thus most Muslim countries have opted for a strong State and a strong army and stowed democracy away in the hold. A second reaction was active or passive rejection. Active rejection had little success: about the passive variety we know little; in particular, we are poorly informed about all those members of sufi orders who simply kept their heads down, lived their lives in their tight little communities and hoped for a better world to come. A third reaction was to find some principles in traditional Islamic teaching which admitted the adoption of certain Western ideas. This third reaction we call the Islamic modernaist, which, although confined to an educated few, has done a great deal to domesticate change in the Muslim world. The fourth is the Islamic fundamentalist, which contains elements of the first three but is packaged quite differently: fundamentalists want a strong state, a major investment in ducation and industry but evertything to be done according to the sharia. Most fundamentalists are unconcerned by the contradictions evident in this combination.

Muslim population, with notions of citizenship losing their meaning for increasing numbers of young people from immigrant families, "victims of social disintegration and labour-market exclusion, yet officially citizens of a country where most of them were born". The policy of "assimilation" by individuals having manifestly failed, is giving way before demands for "integration" as communities. While communalism in France is unlikely to go so far as it has in Britain or in the United States, Kepel concludes that the whole question of citizenship needs to be re-examined in its light.

In 1988, the Rushdie affair, or what the editors of the book under review discerningly call the Satanic Verses Affair, took the world by storm. For Muslims the world over this so-called literary work, full of sheer abuse and filth directed against every Islamic sanctity, was too shocking.

However, in the West there were apologists for it galore, all in the name of an undefined freedom of speech and expression. The literate and the liberal secular establishment formed a strong defence for Rushdie's right of insulting one billion Muslims. The editor of this book perceived the whole affair as a battle between civility and sacrilege. The most disturbing element of the affair was the dominant, wellentrenched position of the upholders of sacrileg who not only defended Rushdie, but also made it impossible for Muslims to present their case.

This book is therefore an attempt to prevent and record the Muslim perspective on the affair and related issues of freedom of expression, the blasphemy law and restrictions in the Western world itself on the right of expression.

Many pieces brings out in full the duality of Western standards on this issue. How else can one explain that despite all its claims for equal opportunities and fair play, only the Anglican faith is protected under the British balsphemy law. Hence British Muslims could not seek any legal redress against this unwarranted and provoked attack on their faith.

A comprehensive account of the affair in all its varied aspects, ranging from a detailed chronology of events to the offensive contents of The Satanic Versas, the Muslim campaign, Rushdie's own statements about his intentions in writing the book and includes extracts from his defandants as well as from saner elements in the West were never allowed to be presented. Rich contributions from a host of Muslim scholars drawn from almost every part of the world who explain why Muslims reacted so strongly to the publication of this work are available but ignored by the western media. The arguments advanced by them, particularly by Shabbir Akhtar, M.H.Faruqui and Ali Mazrui are quite compelling and persuasive.

All contributors are remarkably forthcoming in their far-ranging exploration of issues, subjecting them to analysis full of depth and insight. The editors are to be commended for their even-handed and intelligent selection of material and for clearly presenting their argument. Another excellence of the work is its extensive annotated bibliography and the inclusion of several documents with a significant bearing on the affair. The book will be read with great profit by all for its authoritative information and sustained analysis in the broader context of the West vis-a-vis Islam and Muslims.

Rushdie's work was bound to upset the religions leaders who managed to establish their control over populations of Muslim origin in Britain. By undermining the very basis of an Islamic community identity, it threatened their flock. But the language used by Rushdie in relation to Islam and the Prophet aroused the anger of a much wider Muslim population. By using ironic names for figures held in reverence by pious Muslims, especially the Prophet.... and his entourage, and placing these characters in obscene or morally degrading circumstances, Rushdie alienated a great number of ordinary Muslims outside the inner circle of mullahs and Islamic association leaders. Paradoxically the controversy surrounding the book brought together those who felt that their closest belifs had been attacked, reinforcing many Muslims' sense of community and making them even more receptive to the mullahs and Islamic leaders.

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