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A. CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM

In speaking about fundamentalism, we should note at the beginning that we are using a derogatory term, one that today no religious group claims for itself.  In the first half of the 20th  Century, there were Christians who proudly referred to themselves as “fundament­al­ists,” but as the term came to carry connotations of narrow-mindedness, an intoler­ance of all those outside their group and a rejection of science, rational thought, and modern life, erstwhile fundamentalists came to refer to themselves as “evangelicals.”

Muslims reject the term even more strongly, which they see as part of a media and political campaign to denigrate and isolate Muslims in the modern world.  There are Islamic terms, as we shall see, by which Muslims themselves refer to phenomena and attitudes within the Islamic community that are often dubbed “fundamentalist” by the news media.  Thus, we should be aware at the outset that we are using a term which, although it has become so current as to be inescapable, is not respectful of the beliefs and perspectives of those to whom it is applied.

In order to bring this very broad topic into sharper focus, I will attempt to answer the following questions?  What are the characteristics that distinguish Christian and Muslim “fundamentalists” from other Muslims and Christians?  On what points might we as Catholics find ourselves in agree­­­ment with such groups?  Where do we differ?  What makes fundamentalist religious atti­tudes attractive in the modern world and result in fundamentalism as a growing phenomenon in the world today?  Finally, what pastoral responses might be proposed to this reality?

Characteristics of Christian fundamentalism

The origins of the term are well-known.  At the American Biblical Congress held in Niagara, New York, in 1895, a group of conservative Protestant churchmen who were disturbed by trends in Biblical scholarship and liberal theology, drew up a list of “fundamentals” that they affirmed: verbal inerrancy of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, the doctrine of vicar­ious expiation, and the bodily resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ.  (The resurrection of the body and the Second Coming of Christ are sometimes counted as two fundamentals, giving a total of six.)  These theses were developed in a series of tracts which popularized and syste­matized their views in American Protestant circles.  Their strong missionary thrust (it is estimated that between 70-80% of missionaries are evangelicals) brought their particular understanding of Christianity to many parts of the world, so that today, evangelical Christianity is a world-wide phenomenon, growing quickly throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Christian fundamentalism is not a united movement, but rather an outlook on modern life formed by a distinctive reading of scripture and the role of Christians in world history.  Some reject all denomi­na­tions and have no ties to any ecclesial organization.  Others form fellow­ships of inde­pendent local con­gregations that recognize no higher authority.  Still others are members of recog­nized “histor­ical” chur­ches.  The characteristic features of Christian fundamentalism can be viewed under four headings: their understanding of 1) Scripture, its inspira­tion, interpretation, and authority; 2) a unique history of salvation; 3) eschatology, 4) critique of modernity.

1. Scripture: its inspiration, interpretation, and authority

The 1993 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, with a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger, surveys various aspects of the historical-critical approach to the Bible.  It treats textual criticism, literary genre, tradition and redaction criticism, rhetorical, narrative and semiotic analyses, canonical criticism, and Jewish methods of interpre­tation, aspects of sociological, anthropological, psychological, and psychoanalytic approaches to Scripture.  The document examines both the strengths and limit­a­tions of liberationist and feminist uses of Scripture.  Of all the varied approaches to the Word of God, only the fundamentalist use is described as “dangerous.”

Funda­men­talists might state their position as follows:  Scripture is inerrant because it is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3: 16), who is Truth.  Thus, Scripture cannot contradict itself.  The inerrancy of Scripture flows from the truthfulness of God; to challenge one is to challenge both.  Because Scripture is inerrant, its authority cannot be contested.  There is only one correct interpretation of Scripture, that which comes from a literal reading of the text.

The fundamentalist understanding of inspiration not only presumes divine authorship but denies any role to human reflection and creativity.  The Bible, they hold, is not a product of the human community.  It originates, rather, from God and was transmitted to the community by chosen agents such as prophets and apostles.  Some subscribe to the “dictation theory” by which God takes possession of the imagination and faculties of the individual authors, dic­tating words and ideas and preserving them from errors that could arise from ignorance or deception.  The inspired authors are regarded as passive, receptive secretaries of God’s Word.

God moved the Biblical authors to write and inspired every detail of the original text.  Many hold that God also preserved from error those who prepared “official” trans­lations (such as the King James’ Version in English) from Hebrew and Greek. There are no tales or myths to dis­tort the revelation, no Biblical doctrine that is not completely and perfectly formulated, no need for later reinterpretation or further theological development.  In contrast to the Catholic and Orthodox position that the Bible is to be interpreted by ecclesiastical officials in the light of church tradition, and the liberal Protestant view that Biblical teaching must be evaluated in the light of Christian reason, fundamentalists hold that the Bible is self-contained and self-interpreting.  The Biblical word is complete and comprehen­sive, providing all that needs to be known for salvation and containing within itself the principles of its own interpretation.

This appeal to the self-authenticating nature of the Scripture also distinguishes Scripturalist evangelicals from Pentecostals, who claim that the individual Christian believer will be guided by the direct action of the Holy Spirit to interpret the Scripture.  Throughout most of this century there have been mutual suspicions and antagonisms between evangelicals and Pente­cos­tals, with the scripturalists holding that the fullness of salvific knowledge contained in the Bible renders superfluous all private revelations that arise from Spirit possession.  Pentecos­tals, on the other hand, hold that the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, including that of inter­pretation, were meant to be ongoing blessings in the Christian community.  By repudi­at­ing them, the scripturalists lack the fullness of the apostolic experience.  However, in the last 25 years, there has been a cross-fertilization between Evangelicals and Pentecostals, and the formerly sharp distinctions between the two interpretations are blurred.

Because the Bible is inspired, it is not subject to any historical limitations.  Thus, fundamentalists oppose all critical Biblical interpretation and reject the conclusions that arise from critical-historical methods.  This view, which the document of the Pont. Biblical Commission des­cribes as “naive literalism,” is opposed to the Catholic position, which holds that “the historical-critical method is the indispensable method for the scientific study of the meaning of the ancient texts.”

The difference between the two views would seem to lie in understanding the meaning of the term “literal.”  Fundamentalists contend that “the Bible says what it means and means what it says,” thus making no distinction between what the words say and what they mean.  Since the revealed Word is not limited by historical expression, they do not take into account the change of meaning in words that occurs in the course of time.  They presume that words and ideas today have exactly the same signi­ficance­ they had for the original authors.

Historical-critical scholars also seek to affirm the literal meaning of Scripture, by which they mean the way these words were understood by the Biblical authors, editors, and communities.  They do not presume that this meaning has remained unchanged over the centuries.  Thus, critical scholars do not question the God-given and authoritative character of the Bible, but they insist that Scripture is neither comprehensive, self-contained or self-interpreting.

Finally, it must be recognized that Catholics and evangelicals share many of the same Biblical con­cerns and interests.  Both regard the Biblical teachings as normative and seek to live their lives in accord with them.  Both hold that the Holy Spirit has been with the church since the beginning and guides its understanding of revealed truth.  Both agree that church tradition is important and offers invaluable assistance and insight in explaining Biblical teaching.  It is on the Incarnational implications of the role of the human author in the production of Scripture that they differ.

2. History of salvation: dispensationalism

One of the most distinctive features of the fundamentalist reading of the Bible is the doctrine of the seven dispensations.  This scheme, which dates from the 19th century, was set forth in the notes to the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) which, through its many reprintings, trans­lation into many languages, and study in Bible colleges, has been one of the main vehicles for the spread of dispensationalist doctrine.  Dispensationalist theory divides the world into seven epochs, each of which is characterized by a specific way in which God brings about human salvation.  The seven epochs are:

1) innocence (the Garden of Eden). Adam and Eve were sinless while in the Garden. 

2) conscience (the Fall to Noah). People were saved by following their conscience.

3) human government (Noah to Abraham). Obedience to human rulers.

4) promise (Abraham to Moses). Salvation through the promise.

5) law (Moses to Christ). Salvation by perfect adherence to the Law.

6) grace (the death of Christ to the present; “the Church Age”).

7) millennium (begins with Christ’s Second Coming; “the Kingdom Age”).

Of particular interest is the relationship between the last three dispensations.  The “70 weeks of years” (Daniel 9: 20-27) are divided into four periods.  The 69th “week” ended with the death of Christ and the destruction of the Temple in the year 70.  With the death of Jesus there came into being two peoples: the “worldly” people of God, the Jews, and the “heavenly” people of God, the Church.  The Church Age, in which we live, is a hiatus during which the Gospel is preached to the Gentiles.  When this has been accomplished, the world will enter the 70th week at which time the fulfillment of all the prophecies will occur.

A peculiar feature of dispensationalism is the belief that the Gospel preaching of Jesus took place under the dispensation of the law, while the epistles are addressed to the Church and are fully applicable to the dispensation of grace.  The Scofield Reference Bible states that “the doctrines of grace are to be sought in the epistles, not in the gospels.”  Jesus’ earthy preach­ing, including the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, etc., is seen as calling people to enter the dispensation of grace.  It does not contain the full teaching of the Church Age.  For example, in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is dependent on forgiving others, but under grace, God’s forgiveness is unconditional.  Jesus, under the dispensation of the law, teaches: “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7: 21), but Paul, in the time of grace, teaches: “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10: 13).

There is no contradiction between Jesus and Paul, since Jesus taught under the law, while Paul wrote in the dispensation of grace.  What is important in dispensationalist thought is not the earthly teaching of Jesus but rather his death which expiated for all sins committed by humankind and ushered in the new dispensation, the age of grace.  This, they claim, is faithful to the approach of Paul himself, who admittedly refers but rarely to Gospel teachings and parables, and is more concerned with the effects of Christ’s death and resurrection as the inauguration of the “new and eternal covenant” and God’s unconditional free gift of salvation.

3. Eschatology: the Final Days

The doctrine of divine dispensations sets the stage for one of the best-known elements of funda­mentalist thought, the imminent Second Coming of Christ.  Until the 1920s, most funda­men­­­talist Protestants accepted the historical optimism of the time, that Christians would be successful in transforming the world through evangelical values, overcoming ignorance, pov­erty, and injustice through scientific advances.  Christian missionaries from technologically advanced countries saw themselves as bringing the benefits of Christian civili­zation to all peoples.  Their efforts were to be ultimately crowned with the Christian millennium, a 1000-year reign of peace and prosperity on earth.  At the end of this period, Christ would return and set the divine seal of approval on the Christian transformation of the world.  The tech­nical term for this view in which Christ returns after the millennium called “postmillen­nial­ism.”  In the early part of this century, most fundamentalists were postmillennialists.

The experience of World War I, with Christian armies using modern scientific weapons to annihi­late one another, brought a profound disillusionment with modernity and technology.  More and more, they began to turn to a premillennialist schema which presumes that the world is headed inexorably to disaster.  The signs are all around, “for those who have eyes to see.”  At the point when things cannot get any worse, Christ will return and inaugurate the millennium.  Thus, in the premillennial schema, Christ returns before the millennium.

Relying on obscure passages in the prophecies of Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse), fundamentalist thinkers attempt to predict the coming eschat­olo­gical crisis.  The Antichrist, an ecclesiastical and political tyrant supported by the apostate Christian churches, will appear and lead many astray.  World history will degenerate to a seven-year period called the Great Tribulation (Mt 24: 21-29).  However, before the beginning of the Tribulation, Christ will return to take those who have been “born again” and call upon the name of Jesus out of this world so they will escape the coming sorrows.  This is called the Rapture (cf 1 Thess 4: 16-17) and it is expected quite literally.  The Tribulation will cul­minate in the Battle of Armageddon, after which Christ will come to establish the millennium.

The broad outlines of this worldly eschatology were already sketched in the Scofield Refer­ence Bible in 1909, but were given wide diffusion and concrete application with the publica­tion in 1970 of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which has sold over 20 million copies in over 40 languages.  This work attempts to apply the fundamentalist eschatology to current events.  The first sign of the imminent approach of the Last Days is the establishment of the State of Israel (Dn 9: 20-27).  The Antichrist’s appearance is seen in the appearance of the Beast, which Lindsey identifies with the European Union.  A Russian-led Arab coali­tion is expected to attack Israel, which will be defended by the European Union led by the Antichrist.  The Antichrist will enter the Temple in Jerusalem and demand to be worshiped.  This is the beginning of the Great Persecution, followed by “the greatest battle of all time,” Armageddon.  At this point the Rapture will occur and those who have remained faithful and accept Jesus as their personal Savior will not have to suffer the terrible events to follow.

China will invade Israel and the whole world will be caught up in a nuclear war.  After much suffering, sickness, and famine, Christ will return with an army of angels and saints, defeat the Antichrist and all Gentile powers, and usher in his 1000-year millennial reign.  At the end of this final dispensation, God will free Satan from his bonds and he will make a final effort to over­throw the Reign of Christ.  Christ will totally defeat Satan, who will be hurled into the lake of fire, and the New Jerusalem will descend from heaven.

There are, of course, religious and political implications to this fanciful scenario, which might be amusing were it not for the fact that so many Christians take it as a literal prediction of com­ing events.  Much of the zeal of evangelical missionaries in all corners of the globe is moti­vated by the belief that the Final Cataclysm cannot take place until the Gospel has been preached to all the Gentiles.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, evangelicals lost no time in sending speci­ally trained missionaries into Russia and neighboring republics.  At the political level, rather than fearing a nuclear holocaust, dispensationalists look forward to it.  They them­selves will not suffer the consequences, since they will have been raptured into heaven.  Thus, they tend to support excess­ive mili­tary budgets and oppose nuclear-arms limitation treaties.  There are no stronger sup­porters of the State of Israel than fundamentalist Christians, because they see its existence is a necessary prerequisite for the Final World Crisis.  Every year at the Jewish feast of Succoth, thousands of evangelicals visit Jerusalem and pledge their support for the state of Israel.

4. Anti-modernist social critique

Perhaps the key element which unites Christian fundamentalists of various Churches and eccle­sial communities is their opposition to “modernism.”  By modernism is not meant modern­ity.  Funda­men­­talists are not opposed to advances in technology, health and education.  They are often skill­ful and innovative in the use of media, including its most advanced applications such as satellites, e-mail and internet, to promote and disseminate their message.  What they object to, strongly and angrily, is the modernist philosophy of life which, in their view, offers an anti-religious under­standing the human person, the universe, and soci­ety and­­ proposes a system of values meant to re­place a religious “theocentric” outlook with an anthro­po­centric humanism­.

The element of anger in the fundamentalist rejection of modernist values stems from what they consider to be a “liberal hegemony” which controls decisions and public opinion on a global scale.  They hold that all centers of power, from government ministries and inter­na­tional organi­zations like the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, to uni­ver­sity faculties, NGOs, research centers, family planning and development programs, the arts, popular entertain­ment, and communications media are control­led by “liberals” and “secu­lar humanists,” who have substituted human values for those revealed by God.  Funda­men­tal­ists feel that their own views are ignored by this international liberal establishment, that their concerns are dismissed as devoid of serious consideration, and their religious outlook caricatured as “fanatic” and “obscurantist.”

5. Modernist values in fundamentalist perspective

Fundamentalists often preach and write against secular humanism, a line of thought they trace from the European philosophers of the Enlightenment.  It introduces a religious relativism founded on the invalidity of meta­physics and theology (Kant).  Religion is reduced to an ethic (e.g., in Asia, many countries have replaced religious instruction with “moral education.”)  Religiosity is seen as a characteristic of primitive man.  In mature, modern societies it should be superseded (Comte).  For mature people in mature societies, reason, not revelation, is the sound basis for arriving at truth.  Secularism is presumed as the basis of social life.  Religion is a private affair and has no place in the public life of politics, economy, and social affairs.

A scientific, rational attitude is one of objectivity and affective disinterest, an indifference to the consequences of truth.  Scientific research does not treat ultimate questions but is oriented, rather, towards solving problems.  Primacy is given to the individual over and against society.  This leads to self-fulfillment being regarded as the highest of human goals and to a burning con­cern for human rights.  The social values of the French revolution - liberty, frater­nity, equality - are societal ideals to be striven for with “religious” fervor.

Finally, modernism proposes an historical optimism, an evolutionary vision of history, with a firm conviction of the inevitable victory of the forces of reason, progress, and liberty over those of supersti­tion, obscurantism, and slavery.  The downside of this optimism in social, political, and economic life is a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” that divides the world into “winners” and “losers.”  It provides a philosophical underpinning for “the New World Order” in which success validates ideology, Gold Cards are the sign of ultimate achievement, and the losers get what they deserve.  While the winners are rewarded with wealth, power, and pres­tige, the losers are left to enjoy the destructive and self-destructive pleasures of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

6. The fundamentalist vision of society

The vision of the fundamentalists is quite different.  There is one God, one moral universe, one Scripture.  Truth is not founded on human reason, but has been revealed in the Scripture which offers a clear, comprehensive, incontrovertible guide by which societies and individuals can order their lives according to God’s will.  Success in life is not based on a university education, a high salary and traveling first class, but on accepting Christ as one’s personal savior and being preserved from the tribulation to come.

Fundamentalists hold that modern progress has been achieved at the cost of religious and moral values and results in dehuman­ization, the breakdown of families, and promis­cuity.  The modernist plan of society they compare to a plant fed with supernutrients that is growing too fast, wildly, directionless, out of control, into a monstrous being, devouring everything within its grasp.  As a result, modern society values quantity more than quality, pragmatism more than truth, efficiency more than beauty.

7. Pastoral challenges

Catholics must admit that the fundamentalist critique is not entirely without basis.  Serious Christians, of whatever tendency, cannot accept uncritically the modernist value sys­tem pro­posed by such diverse sources as Time, Asiaweek, CNN, popular films, family plan­ning agen­cies, busi­ness schools, and the advertising industry.  Fundamentalists challenge Catholics­ to be aware that secular principles of society and humanist causes are not value-free.

Fundamentalists often accuse the main-line Churches, including the Catholic Church, of hav­ing sold out to modernist ideals and allowed themselves to become the servants of society’s “winners.”  It can­not be denied that one of the reasons for the fundamentalists’ rapid growth in the world today is their appeal to society’s “losers.”  The fundamentalist outlook meets the felt needs of people on the bottom end of the social and economic scale.  It helps them over­come immediate suffering due to human fail­ure, frustration, and sin, by enabling people to deal with alcoholism, family discord, and mental anguish.  The close-knit, mutually supportive communities of evangelicals provide havens of faith and encouragement in environments that are felt to be impersonal and hostile.  The values of hon­es­ty, frugality, and discipline instilled through sermons and popular religious literature enable people to survive amidst rapid­ly disintegrating social orders.  Finally, their religious experience is fer­vent and emo­tionally satisfying and allows for an enthusiastic release of tension in ecstatic prayer gatherings.

In addition to the ways in which fundamentalists challenge Cath­o­lics today, we must also be conscious of the weak points in their system.  Fundamen­talists tend to idealize or romanticize the past and do not face up to the contradictions and cruel­ties of every period of human his­tory.  Some evangelicals want to have it both ways and preach “the Prosperity Gospel,” with born-again Christians bearing witness how once they had given their lives to Jesus they were rewarded with jobs, windfalls, good health, and peace of mind.  Fundamen­talists employ a sel­ec­tive and often fanciful reading of Scripture.  Not all Scripture is equally cited and medi­tated upon.  The most difficult element of funda­men­talist belief to accept is the blood­thirsty image of God presented in their eschato­logical scenario, One who is willing to allow millions to suffer and die in a nuclear catastrophe and then suffer eternal damnation because they did not accept Christ as their savior.  This is an appalling departure from the message of Christ.

B. MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISM

The similarities of outlook between Muslim revivalists and Christian fundamentalists are most apparent in their the under­standing of Scrip­tural inspiration and authority and in their social critique.  The correspon­dence is most acute in their common rejection of secular humanism, although the Muslim critique has its own history, emphases and concerns.

The concept of Islamic fundamentalism is more problematic than its Christian counterpart.  As we have seen, fundamentalism is a part of Christian history in the last century.  It was the invention of certain Christians who saw the term as properly descriptive of their views.  By contrast, when one speaks of fundamentalism among Muslims, one is using a term that has no proper origin or history within the Islamic tradition, but is applied pejoratively to Muslims by others.  Moreover, it is not careful scholars who refer to Muslims as fundamentalists, but rather journalists, politicians, and casual observers.  Thus, the term “Islamic fundamentalism” does not have the same precision as when it is applied to Christians, but is rather a catch-all for many diverse and often contradictory movements and interpretations of Islam.

Muslims and other observers often use the term “fundamentalism” to indicate movements based on the principle of salafiyya (following the interpretations of the earliest generations of Muslims) or usûliyya (purifying religion according to its original roots.)  These terms indicate a different emphasis from that of Christian fundamen­tal­ists.  The emphasis of Muslim reviv­alists ­is on “beginnings,” “return” and “purifying” reli­gion.  The basic supposition is that Islam has moved away from its origins and in doing so has lost its pristine purity, which can be regained by returning to the original interpretation of the “Fathers” (salaf).

This explains one type of fundamentalist movement, for example, that of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia or the Jamiati Islami in the Indian subcontinent, but other so-called fundamentalist movements, such as the revolutionary ideology of Iran, are diametrically opposed to those movements.  If we were to single out elements that characterize the many diverse and often incompatible movements of Islamic fundamentalism, three would stand out: 1) desecularization (anti-secularism); 2) the priority of divine law over human law; 3) sectarian protest (alternative Islam.)

1. Origins of Islamic fundamentalism

Whereas the origins of Christian fundamentalism may be traced to a 19th century reaction in conservative Protestant circles in America, Islamic fundamentalism finds its roots in a relig­ious response to the loss of sovereignty.  When Muslims looked around the world at the begin­­ning of the 19th Century, they were forced to ask­, “What went wrong?”  From hav­ing possess­ed, in previous centuries, the world’s most powerful, advanced, and prosperous states in the Ottoman, Safavid and Moghul empires, Muslims had by 1800 succumbed almost every­where to the rule of others.

In South and Southeast Asia it was Christian European powers - first the Portuguese, then Dutch, British, Spaniards, Russians, and Americans - who came to dominate Muslim regions.  In the same period, Chinese, Thai, and Burmese Buddhists incorporated Muslim regions into their domains.  In Asia, only Afghanistan was able to remain independent, due to its topological­­ isolation and a skillful playing off of Russian designs against those of England.  In the Middle East and North Africa, the British and French were locked in a power struggle over regions inhabited by Muslims, with the other European powers holding on to whatever enclaves they could.  Iran and Turkey, while remaining nom­inally independent, had to accept humiliating capitulations which gave European powers rights to intervene, interfere, and impose their will.

How did the Muslim world fall so far so fast?  A radical response was provided by M. ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Arabia, who held that Muslim peoples were reduced to their low state because they had deviated from the true Islamic path.  When Muslims aban­doned Islam in its original purity, God left them to the consequences.  Ibn Abd al-Wahhab felt that nothing less than a return to the pure, original Islam would permit Muslims to achieve their past glory.  In his analysis, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was not devising a new theory, but drawing upon a minority strain of thought (Khariji, Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyya) that had been present in the Islamic community from the beginning as a protest against secularizing tendencies.

Those who took up his views were called Wahhabis.  They wanted not only to purify Islam of all accretions and novelties that had wrongly been accepted as Islamic in the course of time, but they held that the Sufi preoccupation with Islam as a personal, spiritual path to God was in itself a distortion of the original intent of the religion.  They claimed that Islam was meant to be a program for building a human society whose every aspect was to be lived in accord with the will of God.  Many hajjis making the pilgrimage to Mecca encoun­tered Wahhabi ideas in Arabia and brought these views back with them to their homelands in Asia.

The Wahhabi analysis had political implications.  If God intended the Islamiza­tion of society in all its social, economic, and political aspects, this could only be accomplished if Muslims themselves were in control of the political systems.  Their polit­ical theory held that the state existed to permit Muslims to foster the Islamization process, to forbid deviations and punish wrongdoing.  They felt that the Sufis, in their efforts to draw up interior spiritual paths aimed at mystical union with God, ignored political realities and held Muslims back from the task of forming society according to God’s will.  In this way, the Muslim revival linked religious and political concerns.  In order to pursue their societal ends, they sought to create a state that would favor and implement these goals.  The first objective, therefore, was to achieve libera­tion from non-Muslim rule.  Wahhabi-inspired movements, such as that of Sayyid Ahmad Barelavi (d. 1831) in north India,­ worked for the overthrow of colonial regimes in order to create an Islamic state that would implement the aims of Islamization of society.

2. Geopolitical factors influencing Islamic revival

After 1945, two organizations emerged to articulate the concept of the Islamic state in modern societies.  In Egypt and other Arab countries, the Muslim Brotherhood, insis­ting that rule by Muslims did not ensure the creation of an Islamic state, worked to counter national­ist feelings that they felt divided rather than united the Islamic umma.  The harsh repression of the Brother­­hood in Egypt and Syria convinced many that the new re­­g­imes were as opposed to the creation of an Islamic state as the colonial powers had been.  In South Asia, the Jamiati Islami held that Islam offered the world an Islamic solution to every modern problem.  There was already an Islamic science, econom­ics, poli­tics, and legal system, and educational program.  Muslims had only to search in their own early tradition to find the ingredients necessary to develop Islamic alternatives to these secular fields.

As one Muslim nation after another achieved independence in the years after World War II, the revivalists hoped that Islamic states would be set up.  What actually happened was quite different.  Muslim rule replaced the colonial regimes, but the ideals of the Islamic state were far from being implemented.  The new ruling class throughout the Muslim world generally created nation states on a Euro­pean nationalist model.  Legal codes were based on those of Western nations and were often mere­ly revisions of colonial law.  On the grounds that it was more egalitarian and would prevent the abuses of uncontrolled capital­ism, socialist policies of a one-party state, state ownership of industries, and centrally planned economies were adopted.  Cultural mores as well as development concepts were borrowed from the West.

In the first years after World War II, many Muslims were enthusiastic about the creation of Pakistan, which they considered a model for the modern Islamic democracy.  When it grad­u­ally became clear that Pakistan’s Islamic identity did not enable the country to overcome eth­nic clashes, economic mismanagement and corruption, military takeovers, and equit­able dis­tri­bution of wealth, many Muslims claimed that the Pakistan model was a failed experi­ment.  A truly Islamic state would have to undergo a more revolutionary societal restructuring.

The emergence of the state of Israel in 1949 had great influence on the thinking of militant Muslims.  Seen as a state for non-Muslim Europeans created in the Arab heartland by West­ern powers to assuage their guilt for Europe’s treatment of its Jews, Israel, in expelling and oppressing the Palestinians, provided the imagery of oppressed Muslims achiev­ing liberation through armed rebellion.  The Palestinian cause engendered a conviction that the West, des­pite its professions of concern for the development of Muslim countries, was in fact opposed to Islam and that Arabs and Muslims generally were victims of injustice perpetrated by inimical Western powers.

The disastrous 1967 war was a watershed in modern Muslim thought.  Egypt, the cultural capital of the ­Arab world, led by the charismatic Gamal Abd al-Nasser, sustained by alliances and financial backing from other Arab countries, went down to quick and ignominious defeat by tiny Israel.  Not only were Nasser and the ideology of pan-Arab nationalism discredited, but also the military.  Corrupt and ineffective in its role of defen­ding the nation, the military was seen as a costly expenditure which existed mainly to preserve the internal status quo and enable the ruling elite to govern by force, in many cases, against the will of the people.

The lingering hopes that the Western powers would provide the assistance needed in Muslim regions were dashed when those states supported Israel both financially and in international diplomatic fora such as the United Nations.  In response to these reversals, many began to question the effi­cacy of nationalist thought and turned to religion to furnish more effective means to govern Muslim peoples.

The 1979 Iranian revolution gave concrete shape to these grievances. The world was amazed when religious solidarity enabled Iranian Muslims to overthrow with apparent ease a wealthy and unpopular Muslim regime, one which had been presumed to be of unassailable stability.  The fact that the Shah’s regime was a strong proponent of secularization and closely allied to the West was not lost on Muslims.  The Islamic Republic of Iran replaced, in the thoughts of many, the failed Pakistan as the model of an Islamic state.  All observers, whether sympa­thetic or not, agreed that the government of Ayatollah Khomeini was truly revolu­tionary in rethinking and reorganizing every aspect of social life according to the principles of Islam.

Later events in the Muslim world encouraged the growth and spread of revivalist ideals.  The 1991 Gulf War and the continuing blockade against Iraq, along with economic and dip­lo­matic mea­sures taken against other outspoken Muslim nations, confirmed for many that the West, particularly the U.S.A., intended to isolate Muslim countries much as communist states had previously been iso­lated.  For others, the electoral victory of the Front Islamique du Salut in Algeria in 1992 showed that a grass-roots Islamic poli­tical movement could succeed through democratic processes.  The un­crit­ical welcome given to the military coup and dicta­tor­ship in Algeria confirmed, for many Muslims, the hollow­ness of European rhetoric about democracy and its implacable enmity towards Islam.

3. Critique of traditional Islam in Asia

Muslim fundamentalists reserve some of their harshest criticism for the way that Islam has devel­oped and been expressed in traditional Islamic societies.  While this is a universal phen­om­enon, I will focus my remarks on Islam in Asian societies. Islam was brought to Asia, not by religious scholars, but rather by traders and Sufi holy men.  The main exceptions to this pat­tern are Central Asia and the northern part of the Indian subcon­ti­nent, where Muslim armies, led by a Turkish-Mongol warrior caste, were decisive in spreading Islamic rule.  Even there, the eventual con­versions of local peoples to Islam were mainly due to Sufi itiner­ant preach­ers.

Although Muslims had been present in Asian coastal cities as for­eign trading colon­ies almost since the first century of Islam, the great age of the spread of Islam in Asia was the 14-16th centuries, which saw widespread conversions of local peoples across northern India, Bangla­desh, western China, and the mainland and islands of south­east Asia.  The Sufi orders and their mystical interpre­ta­tion of Islam represented the most dynam­ic force in Islam at the time, and it was the collab­or­ation between Sufi and mer­chant - in the Indian Ocean and on the Silk Road between Iran and China - that was responsible for the dramatic spread of Islam.

The point relevant for understanding traditional Islam in Asia is that neither the Arab and Persian businessmen, the Turkish military conquerors, nor the Sufi saints were deeply know­ledge­able about Islam nor extensively read in ortho­dox Islamic thought.  They were often devout and zealous Muslims, but their understanding of Islam did not often have a strong doc­trinal basis.  The Sufis, who occasionally were well versed in Islam­ic literature, empha­sized religious experience as the basis of an interior union of love with God and viewed the prac­tices of the shari’a and the study of Islamic law as either peripheral or pre­lim­inary to the real project of Islam, which was the path to union of love and will with God.

All of this made Muslims flexible in tolerating pre-Islamic Asian religiosity, expressed as visits to local shrines and holy sites such as the tomb of holy persons, banyan trees, caves, mountains, and cemeteries, accompanied by an offer­ing of flowers, incense, rice, and fruit to the local spirit who dwelt in the place.  Once Islam was established in a region and began to have its own holy men and women - in many cases the miss­ionary who brought Islam to the region - the tomb of the holy per­son either replaced or was joined to the already existing pilgrim­age site.  Islamic practice distinguished Muslims from the non-Muslims with whom they lived in basic­ ways - one God, the prohibition of pork and alcohol, the Ramadan fast.  But in other matters - dress, marriage customs, village organ­ization, even religious archi­tecture - Muslims followed local norms­­.

Given their desire to arrive at a personal, loving union with God, the Sufis tended to focus on individualized interior relig­ious practice and they correspondingly deemphasized the social and political aspect of religion.  Islam was seen as a way of life that could be lived in any form of government, in any culture or nation.  Even when Muslim regions came to be governed in the colonial period by non-Muslim rulers, traditional Islam was politically quietist and found a workable, if uncom­fortable modus vivendi with the new reali­ties.  In the creation of Pakistan and in indepen­dence move­ments in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, it was not the trad­itional Muslim scholars who were in the forefront, but rather the reformist lay leaders, usually trained not in the religious sciences but in secular disciplines.

The easy accommodation of trad­i­tional Islam with Asian cultures was challenged­­ by some Muslims.  They understood the purpose of Islam to be the construction of a soci­ety in accord with God’s will, rather than one based on human likes and dislikes.  The Islamic community was to be distinguished from others not simp­ly by a certain number of specific injunc­­tions (e.g., the five pray­ers, fasting during Ramadan) or prohibitions (e.g., from alco­hol or pork), but by a way of life that embraces every aspect of personal behavior and social relations.­­

To the reformers, it was not simply a matter of correct­ing the accommodations that tradi­tion­al Muslims had made with pre-Islamic Asian cultures.  What was needed was nothing less than a reorientation of understanding the nature of Islam.  For the reformers, Islam was a social pro­gram aimed at building a certain kind of society, not, as many Sufis had seen it, a spiritual path to union with God.  The guide­lines for what society should be like, the reform­ers held, are found in a careful study of the shari’a.  The Islamic way of life is not limited to spiritual personal perfection­, but extends to societal relations, economic affairs, and political systems.

The earliest reform movements in Asia were undertaken by the Sufi orders themselves, partic­u­larly the Naqshbandi.  These Sufis envis­ioned the Islami­zation of society as a lengthy but irrevers­ible his­torical process.  Islamization was not achieved at the moment that most of the people in a given region became Muslims.  It was rather an evolution­ary process that began with the first preaching of Islam and would go on for centuries.

The role of the state was to “enforce good, pro­­­­­hib­it evil.”  This meant, neg­a­tively, that the state must not put any obstacles in the way of the project of Islamiza­tion.  It must not command that which is forbidden­, nor prevent Muslims from carrying out the social and ritual prescrip­tions of Islam.  Many reformers added that the role of governments included positive promotion of Islam.

In the colonial period, this understand­ing of the role of the state brought Muslims regularly into conflict with colonial administrat­ors, and reformist Muslims played a prominent role in the struggle for indepen­dence.  They believed that until Muslims were themselves in control of the political apparatus and govern­ing their own na­tions, the state could not play its proper role in Islamizing soci­ety.  After independence, reformist movements discovered that the new rulers, liberal fellow Muslims, were not interested in promoting Islam.

4. Muslim reformist critique of modernity

Many factors underlie the emergence of militant Muslim movements.  There is a criticism of the Sufi roots of Islam in Asia and a desire to reorient the inner-directed thrust of Sufism towards an activist program of social reform.  The political philosophy of Muslim militants holds that the state should be an instrument in the promotion of an Islamic way of life.  In many countries, a revivalist approach to Islam is an attractive alternative that promises to resolve the crises in existing institutions: the lack of effective and representative govern­ment, the wasteful yet ambiguous role of the military, the failure of socialist central plan­ning and management of the economy, and the institutionalization of the traditional ulama which made them servants of the governments rather than spokesmen for the people.

This is accompanied by a harsh critique of modernity.  Militant Muslim objections to are similar to those of Christian fundamentalists but have their own slant.  Among Muslims, the focus of protest is secularism, and their social program could be called “desecularization” or “the sacralization (or Islamization) of society.”  Like their Chris­tian counterparts, Muslims are ready to accept and use modern technology of communications, transportation, and consumer goods to promote their cause.

In Western secular humanism, they perceive a post-religious ideology that seeks to over­turn a God-centered, community-based understanding of human life.  They see moder­nity as an ego­istic, individualist approach to life that relativ­izes religion, exalts the individ­ual, and divides the world into masters and subjects, advanced and underdeveloped.  Ethics is re­duced to market expediency, while family values and moral choices are left to the private deci­s­ion of the individual.  The natural world is simply raw material to be economically exploited.

Muslim reformers claim that modern societies have abandoned God and view a religious out­look as an outmoded relic from former times.  In this secular age, the need for God has been superseded, and reli­gion is seen as typi­cal of “primitive, immature, back­ward, super­stitious” societies.  This is sym­ptomatic, the reformers hold, of human arro­gance, of the view that man is capable of all things, sufficient unto himself, the measure of good and bad, right and wrong.  Dom­ination, power, wealth, sex-appeal and conspicuous con­sumption are signs of suc­cess, evi­dence that someone is an “achiever.”

In the highly individualistic modernist outlook, it­­­­ is not society or the social group, not even the family, that counts.  It is the individual person who makes his or her own mor­al­ity, auto­no­­mous in moral code and decisions.  Human rights are equated with ­­­­­“the rights of the indi­vidual.”  Muslim revivalists the prior “rights of God” to determine proper societal relations.  God’s revealed Word gives precedence to “the rights of society,” to the overriding preroga­tives of the collectivity over the desires of the individual.

Another characteristic which the Muslim reformers share with Christian fundamentalists is the harsh anger of the outsider, of those who are excluded from the elite “in-group” who both pro­mote and profit from modernity.  The Muslim reformers perceive this liberal elite to be occupying the seats of power - the great international bureaucracies at the U.N., W.H.O., and I.M.F., government ministries even in Muslim countries, the univer­sities, schools and depart­ments of education­, think tanks and consultancy boards, the owners, promoters and personali­ties of the mass media.  In short, they hold that the “liberal consensus” has created an en­vir­on­ment in which the only viewpoint to be taken seriously is their own, while ­other points of view are simply dismissed as unenlightened, backward, or fanatic.  In the view of the reform­ers, the liberal elite not only express public opinion, they create it and dictate it.

According to Muslim reformers, what is at stake is a fundamental conflict of values.  On the one hand, in a secular value system­­­, the individual person is conceived as the center of the universe.  Fulfilling to the utmost one’s potential, capabilities, and legit­imate desires is considered the highest human goal, and individuals must be free to achieve these aspirations.  The only limitation on human freedom is that in pursuing one’s personal objec­tives, no one must violate the rights of others to pursue and achieve their own goals.

While secular liberalism does not deny the existence of God or reject religion as such, it is skeptical of the ability of any religious system to attain truth, and it is opposed to the role of religion in public life.  Religion can be admitted as the personal choice of some individuals who feel they need some moral direction in their private and familial lives, but it has no place in public affairs.  The marketplace, social interaction and, above all, government, are autono­mous spheres that must exist and operate outside the influence of religious thought.

Against secular values, Muslim revivalists propose their own theocentric value system.  For them, God has revealed a proper way for humans to live and has laid down the principles on which soci­ety is to be built.  They take the moral will of God very seriously and view as enemies those who would propose incompatible ethical values.  They are called upon to struggle (the root meaning of jihâd) against secular, i.e., anti-God, anti-religion, anti-morality forces propagated first and foremost by American and European societies.

5. The direction of history

In their reading of recent historical events, Muslim revivalist find points of agreement with Christian fundamentalists, but also their own distinctive vision.  They hold that the modernist ideology, with its anti-religious component, ­scored its first successes in intel­lectual circles in Europe and was then taken up and spread throughout the world by Ameri­ca.  Having got its start in predominantly Christian re­gions, the first victim to modernist philosophy was Chris­tian­ity, which Muslim reformers are convinced is dead in its medieval homeland.

Muslim activists are convinced that the goals of secular advocates are ambitious and inimical to Islam.  They believe that ­the West­­ is out to de­stroy Islam as the last bastion of the religious worldview and ­per­ceive the onslaught to be carried out on many fronts.  The cam­paign is political in the sense that the Western alli­ance intends to iso­late Islam­ic countries much in the way that the communist bloc had been isolated before 1989.  It is military in that tactics of war - blockades, frozen assets, recourse to air attacks, and other coercive actions - are more often directed against Muslim nations than against others.  It is economic in that the former colonial domination has been replaced by economic globalization, markets manipulated from the outside, political lead­ers bought off by international industry, and military action threat­ened or taken to ensure control of resources.  The attack is religious in the constant presen­tation of Islam - in film, global television networks, newsmaga­zines, and spy novels - as a fanatic, violent, xenophob­ic faith that is difficult for all others to live with.  The attack is cultural in that all things Western - education, clothing, law, manners, music, film, house furnishing, relations between sexes - are pre­sented as superior and to be admired and imitated.  They see the alleged cultural superior­ity of the West, which presents itself as the unique font of truth, liberty, and progress, as an implicit attack on their faith, culture, and traditions.

If all this seems overstated and even somewhat paranoid, it re­flects a widespread perception in the Muslim world.  The conviction that Islamic faith and Muslim culture are imperiled ex­plains many of the reac­tions among Muslims, of political, intellectual, and religious leaders as well as of the man and woman in the street, to recent events such as the Gulf War, the Algerian coup d’etat, and to the continuing dramas in Palestine and Bosnia.  Each of these tragedies is interpreted in the light of the pre­ceding critique of modernity.  The Gulf War was seen as a war for control of “Muslim” oil fields, waged by a Western-assembled and control­led coalition attacking a predominantly Muslim people with vastly superior technological wea­pon­ry.  Israel is seen as the unilateral implantation of a Western people and ideology in the heart of the Islamic world.  Bosnia is taken as evidence that the European powers will never permit a Muslim-dominated nation, no matter how progressive, to exist in Europe.

Like Christian evangelicals, Muslim revivalists regard the direction that history has taken in this century as the temporary triumph of the forces of evil.  When Ayatollah Khomeini refer­red to the United States as the “Great Satan,” he was not simply engaging in invective, but making a theological statement.  The course of cur­rent history, they feel, is a threat to morality and a God-centered life.  Unlike dispensa­tion­alists, Muslims foresee no scenario of imminent eschatological crisis.  They are optimistic that they will be successful in withstanding and eventually overcoming anti-God forces, although it will require struggle, sacrifice, and suffering on their part.  Many claim that the God-given task of Islam today is to save the world from the onslaught of Western liberal hegemony.

6. Bases for dialogue

The Muslim critique of modern secularism is a challenge to Christians­.  For Muslims, it is God who is the center of the universe, at the heart of human life and every human activity.  Any way of life that reduces faith to private morality and ritual is unacceptable, an affront to God’s majesty and holiness.  They regard modern Christians’ easy acceptance of secular society and human­­ist ethics as a compromise with the essence of religious faith.  Muslims repeatedly affirm that they have no argument with “true” Christians, to whom they look as natural allies in the struggle against modern secularity, but they feel that Christians have too often “sold their birthright” in order to present themselves as modern and progressive.  It is tempting for Christians to feel complacently that we have been successful in reconciling our religious faith with the demands of modern life.  We can even be tempted to boast that we are “modern” while Muslims are “backward.”  Yet we may not be conscious of the extent to which we have com­­promised our faith with incompatible elements of modern or Western culture.  We may be unaware of the ways in which the Christian churches have been wounded in the course of their encounter with liberal values.

Yet it is precisely on these grounds that we must engage in dialogue with Muslims on the ques­tion of modernity.  We accept the challenges posed by modern values, such as the liberal cri­tique of religion as often being a factor of oppression, inequality, and pat­riarchy in human societies.  We uphold ­­­a commitment to the legitimate human and civil rights of all, a commit­ment that does not entail a blind acceptance of everything that is claimed to be a human right.  In dialogue, we must challenge Muslims to engage, with us, in a constructive and critical encoun­ter with modern liberal philosophy in order to disen­tangle its positive humane values which are confirmed by religious faith from the destruc­tive, divisive, and egoistic elements which are by-products of secular and modernist thinking and policy.