Religious violence has always existed and the latest events in New York, Washington, etc. are just the accumulation of hate that the fundamentalist groups have. There have been many attacks against civilians by fundamentalist groups and it is still a mystery to find out a way to stop them. Today the USA is very confused about this problem, George W. Bush and all the people that work with him, have to study the psychology of this kind of people, because they know that by destroying military bases or soldiers they are not going to stop terrorism. The problem in here is that the ordinary people is promoting those actions and the USA has always defended the fact that people shouldn’t attack civilians.  But for understanding why this is happening we must define what is fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism is a word that fanatic people share and increases this feeling of hate towards the others, it tries to make your ideology the right one and the only one, with lack of tolerance, and a big amount of ignorance. Any person who is informed about these religions knows that they are non violent religions, in fact they promote forgiveness and they are tolerant. The people who practice them in a non-fundamentalist way, are people who accept that we are living in a world of diversity and because of that we must respect others.  Today, people usually relate all the terrorist acts with the Islam even though fundamentalism exists in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and in any religion that takes everything to the extremes.

“Hadden and Shupe argue that fundamentalism is an attempt to draw upon a religious tradition to cope with and reshape an already changing world. The question arises: What changes are so world wide that a reactive movement like fundamentalism can be found anywhere in the world? The answer, according to Hadden and Shupe, is globalization. The range of religious responses to globalization explains fundamentalism's global presence” (Jones, 1998).

    In the case of Islam, we could say that it mixes politics with religion, so it usually affects the entire world and having religious subjects in politics is not easy. Islam aims at islamizing law, institutions and government . The conservative or fundamentalist tendencies are to create this socio-political organizations with violent actions, they don’t want to have a gradual change and don’t  want any compromise with the existing regimes of other countries like Egypt (more liberal) or Algeria. But there are other groups which are called the moderates that are open to political dialogue, even though they are the majority, the fundamentalists are very dangerous groups because you only need one person to make a whole building  to explode.

    As we can see the fundamentalist Islamic groups are very serious about their religion. They believe in the Koran word by word without making a personal interpretation of it. It is this overwhelming seriousness about religion that makes fundamentalism dangerous. Fundamentalists are not only concerned about their own conformity to doctrine, but the conformity of the rest of society to it. They don’t even hesitate to intervene in the political process to ensure that the others are acting according their own world view (which is always the right one).  “Accordingly, global fundamentalism as a phenomena denotes many religiously motivated politically active groups existing in a variety of religious traditions and systems” (Jones, 1998).

    In Judaism, for example, fundamentalism has a very big importance for their society and they can become a very violent group. They have the majority in the parliament and they decide about any political issue that appears.

    The results of this extremes are obvious. Terrorism in Northern Ireland, which is framed in religious terms, war in the Middle East, domestic terror in Egypt, Algeria and recently in the USA, all these around the world are the results of the justification of the fundamentalist groups that believe that the other side is always wrong. The main leaders are not including the basic ideas of their religions like tolerance, love and compassion, if they did, all these conflicts wouldn’t exist. But  they are justifying it because they believe that God is on their side and will reward them for their acts.

    Now, here we have the dilemma. Fundamentalism is not an army, is a religious group formed by any kinds of people. By distracting sincere people from their spiritual growth, and obstructing scientific inquiry and intellectual debate, fundamentalism derails the progress that society would achieve by honest, competent religious practice. It also justifies in its adherents’ minds the prejudices and the intolerance that are all the most base of human instincts. To gain and keep adherents, these religions can do great violence to human freedom and dignity, and often are the source of much economic and social failures, in fact most of these societies are bankrupt.

         But how do we fight against them?. Numerous politicians have tried to offer their understanding of the reasons for this phenomenon of the “Islamic renaissance” as it is called today, but these fundamentalist groups won’t negotiate peace, they are deeply blinded by their ideologies.

In the other side we have the US, which is trying to follow it’s ideology but they’ve never been part of a conflict like this. If they kill the main leaders they would become martyrs of a religious cause for their followers. There was a comment on TV, in which a member of the Congress said that the perfect punishment for Bin Laden would be to make him a plastic surgery and transform him into a woman, after that they would take him back to his country.   

    In conclusion I can say that this conflict against fundamentalist groups will be one of the longest wars we’ve ever witnessed because there’s no specific solution for it. The problem was that the whole world is trying to make just one culture, the culture of globalization and some sects are being offended by this actions. The best thing we can do is to let them live according to their ideologies. Unfortunately Bin Laden is not only fighting for this religious cause but for his own benefit, there are many political and personal issues involved. Fundamentalism is a dangerous utopia. It cannot exist if we live in a society with enormous differences like we do, but the people who are willing to live in their ideal world of Islam, Judaism, Christianity or any fanatic follower, will never be happy in the kind of world in which we are living today.

Written by Alejandra Caracas