Religious Fundamentalism: Causes & Remedies

Abstract

In late 1970s, forces who opposed secular ideologies, bounced back. The opponents were hostile and tried to suppress the voices who spoke against the mainstream ideology presented by a specific group of people. People with identical mind-set were found in all the prevailing religions in various forms. Resultantly, militancy pounced at the beginning of the 20^th century. As soon as it hyped, it was tried to patch-up the term ‘fundamentalism’ with religion, thus a new terminology of ‘religious fundamentalism’ was added to the literature. The wrong notion attached to this word resulted in loss of life and bloodshed in different parts of the world. The intolerant group who was least interested in politics exploited the widening gap between worshippers of different religions. The wavelength of fundamentalism peaked in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel. However, it is wrong to address the phenomenon under the label of religion. In this descriptive research, it has been tried to identify the origin of word ‘fundamentalism’, unravel the phenomenon of ‘religious fundamentalism’, and to know its causes. This research compared Islam with Christianity to draw parallels of religious fundamentalism in both religions. After objective analysis, it has been concluded that religious fundamentalism is a universal phenomenon and it is unfair to attribute it to any single religion, such as, Islam.

Keywords: Fundamentalism: origin & types; religious Fundamentalism; Militancy & Fundamentalism; West & Fundamentalism; Islam, Christianity & Fundamentalism