From these changes spring the fundamentalists’ fear that modern society wants to purge itself of religion. Modernity has been liberating and productive, but it has its dark side. The new tolerance was only skin deep. Some forms of Jewish fundamentalism received a major impetus from the Nazi Holocaust, when Hitler tried to exterminate European Jewry. In the Muslim world, modernity came not with the independence of modernizing movements in the West, but with colonial subjugation. What took the West 300 years has had to be accomplished in a mere 50, and secularization has been so rapid that it has often been experienced as an assault. When Turkish President Kemal Ataturk modernized Turkey, for example, he closed down all the maddrasas, abolished the Sufi orders, and forced all men and women to wear Western dress. These reformers often wanted their countries to look modern, even though only a small elite actually understood the new ideas behind the social changes. In Iran, the Shahs made their soldiers walk through the streets, tearing off women’s veils and ripping them to pieces. In 1935, Shah Reza Pahlavi ordered his soldiers to shoot at a large crowd of unarmed demonstrators in one of the holiest shrines in Iran—protestors were peacefully protesting against obligatory Western clothes. Hundreds of Iranians died that day. His son, Shah Muhammad, executed theology students and tortured leading mullahs to death. In such a climate, it is not surprising that secularization was regarded not as liberating, but as viciously destructive of faith. It is also not surprising that the masses, who had no Western education, but who witnessed the bewildering and incomprehensible transformation of their country, clung to the traditional faith as a lifeline.

Even in the United States, where secularism has been very good for religion, many in rural areas feel belittled and colonized by the ethos of the academic and political elite. Indeed, arguably the fi rst modern fundamentalist movement was developed among US Protestants in the newly industrialized northeastern cities during World War I, when it became apparent that science could be applied with lethal effect to modern weaponry. The terror and alienation of fundamentalist Protestantism is shown in its apocalyptic vision, which sees the world as so wicked and perverted that God has to smash it in a final, fearful cataclysm. Even the benign institutions of modernity—international organizations like the League of Nations and more modern groups like the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Council of Churches—are seen as infected by the Devil or the Antichrist. More generally, fundamentalists are haunted by a fear of anything approaching world government. The global village is a threat to their identity, and without this singularity they are nothing.

Addressing, Not Attacking

Incipient fundamentalism always becomes more extreme when attacked. A telling example of this dynamic can be found in the debate over evolution in the United States. For US Christian fundamentalists, evolution is more than a mere scientific hypothesis; it is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern world. Like abortion, it seems to reveal the destructive, murderous underbelly of modernity. An evolutionist, they imagine, champions the survival only of the fittest, convinced that might alone is right.

The skirmish between these fundamentalists and the liberal establishment during the 1925 Scopes Trial took place after some fundamentalists tried to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, blaming the practice for their radical alienation from mainstream US society. The media subjected the fundamentalists to such ridicule that they slunk away from the trial, having suffered what seemed to be a fatal defeat. But these fundamentalists were simply withdrawing in the time-honored way, leaving the mainstream denominations, and founding their own churches, bible colleges, broadcasting stations, and publishing houses.

In fact, after the humiliation of the Scopes Trial, these Christian fundamentalist groups became more extreme. Before the trial, many had inclined toward biblical literalism, but only a small minority embraced the new Creation Science; after the trial, they became militantly literalistic, and Creationism became de rigueur. Before the Scopes Trial, fundamentalists were often on the left of the political spectrum; afterwards, they swung to the far right, where they have since remained.

The same pattern exists in Sunni Islam. Its chief fundamentalist ideologue was Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by Egypt’s President Jamal Abdul Nasser in 1966. Qutb was one of thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood whom Nasser imprisoned with trial in 1954. The Brotherhood had a small terrorist wing, but the majority of those who were incarcerated in Nasser’s concentration camps had done nothing more incriminating than hand out leaflets or attend a meeting. Some were executed; others suffered mental and physical torture and became radicalized. Qutb went into the camp as a moderate; he had hated the materialism and apparent decadence of US society but was still committed to reform rather than revolution. In the camp, however, he became a fundamentalist. When he saw the suffering of the Brothers even as Nasser vowed to confine religion to the private sphere, he could only judge secularism to be a great evil. In prison, Qutb evolved an ideology that inspires Sunni fundamentalists to this day—including Osama bin Laden, a “second-generation” fundamentalist, who constantly uses Qutbian imagery and concepts.

Fundamentalism becomes more extreme when attacked because the assault convinces fundamentalists that the establishment really does want to eliminate them. The recent Israeli attempts to assassinate Hamas leaders have simply inspired a new spate of suicide bombing. The invasion of Iraq by the United States has opened a new terror front, and apparently strengthened Al Qaeda, because it seems to prove that the West has embarked on a new Crusade against the Muslim world.

If it is counterproductive to try to suppress fundamentalist groups, it is also unwise to ignore them or to allow an originally secular conflict to fester. History shows that malcontent millennial movements become more religious when they lose hope for a conventional political solution. After the Six Day War in 1967, there was a religious revival in the Arab world, because the Western ideologies of socialism and nationalism seemed bankrupt. In their quest for oil and a powerful strategic position in the Middle East, Western governments have inadvertently fuelled the rise of this extremism by supporting undemocratic governments that discourage opposition. Increasingly, the only place where people can voice their discontent has been the mosque. The Palestinians long held out against this trend, retaining a secularist ideology until 1987, when, despairing of the political process, the Islamist parties emerged. Once religion is brought into politics, positions become absolute and more difficult to resolve.