Over the past few months,
one of the questions that has received extensive debate is, why? Why would they
do this to us? What is it about us that attracted their hatred? One frequent
answer is that this is the reaction of more traditional societies to modernity.
That is, the more traditional societies of the Moslem world are being torn apart
by modern culture coming from western Europe and America, and the United States
is seen as the leader, especially since English is the predominant international
language.
The
media often portray this as modernity vs. fundamentalist religion, usually
emphasizing Islam in the current context, but often extending to Christianity
and even Judaism. A useful definition of fundamentalism is this: if a
traditional religion is one that exists in a traditional society untouched by
the pluralism of modernity, then fundamentalism is a traditional religion that
rejects the choices that modern society offers to lead people away from their
religion.
So
what has fundamentalism rejected, whether Moslem, Christian or otherwise?
Technology,
one of the key products of modern society, is widely accepted in Islamic and
other fundamentalist religions. Most fundamentalist religions have Web sites. In
modern Jerusalem, the Arab taxi drivers proudly drive Mercedes (while their
Israeli counterparts can be found in Yugos). Fundamentalist Jewish groups in the
heart of Jerusalem, those who still speak Yiddish rather than modern Hebrew,
nevertheless use computers to do their bookkeeping and publications. In the
United States, Christian fundamentalists have been among the greatest users of
technology in worship and evangelism. So technology, however disruptive,
generally has not been rejected by fundamentalist religions.
All
fundamentalist religions reject modern pop culture. Since much of pop culture is
created to shock or titillate jaded western sensibilities, it is not hard to
imagine how it affects viewers from more conservative societies. It represents
modernity, especially modern western society, as overly interested in sex and
violence. It shocks and confounds the ethical character and moral standards of
more traditional societies. (Let's face it, it shocks the moral sensibilities of
many members of our own society!) That fundamentalist Islam or Christianity
reject pop culture should not be surprising.
But
there is another area of modernity that fundamentalist religions see as even
more dangerous, namely, the fields of the humanities and social sciences (also
known as social studies). This is because these deal with ideas, rather than in
the understanding of things, as do science and technology. Fundamentalists
reject ideas such as the ability to debate and question the meaning of a text,
as happens in the study of literature, and even sacred texts, as happens in
religious studies. They reject the notion that the success of Paul or Mohammed
in winning converts can be explained through the insights of anthropology. They
won't accept sociological analyses in discussions on the status of people in
society; they reject the analysis of notions of god or of truth as happens in
philosophy; and reject the comparison of different ideas of justice, as happens
in political science.
Fundamentalist
religions are terrified by these ideas, which move from the clear-cut, correct
or incorrect, black-and-white, study of the natural world and the application of
that knowledge in technology and engineering, to the more gray areas of human
and divine values. It is this aspect of modernity that they reject the most
strongly, for it is these ideas that strike most deeply at their own ideas and
beliefs.
So to
say that fundamentalists fear and reject modernity is true, but much too vague.
If we are going to understand what motivates them, we must identify which
aspects of modernity cause which kinds of problems. That it is the areas that
are innocuous to us that cause the most trouble should be a clue to further
understanding of our differences.