Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA23043 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 1 Oct 2001 14:15:46 +0100 Subject: Fwd: Questions for Martin E. Marty, a Scholar of Religion Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 09:07:58 -0400 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20011001130850.AAA11741@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Questions for Martin E. Marty, a Scholar of Religion
By PAUL SCOTT
Were the attacks on New York and Washington about fundamentalism?
Yes. Words like ''extremism'' or ''fanaticism'' miss what followers are
extreme or fanatic about. ''Fundamentalism,'' however, connotes a
fundamental religious vision behind the movement. It would be hard to
sustain this kind of calculative act if they weren't fired by a religious
vision. Try to picture day after day going to flight school to learn how
to smash yourself into a skyscraper, knowing you're going to die. You
have to have the promise of paradise for that. You have to have the
promise that God is on your side. But I cannot say it emphatically
enough: this is not Islam. This takes Islamic texts -- it takes elements
in its tradition -- and skews them.
So fundamentalism isn't about the fundamentals of anything?
The biggest mistake the casual observer makes about fundamentalisms is
that people think this is the ''old-time religion.'' In fact, no
religious forces are more effective at using the technical instruments of
modernity. They will preach sermons against science and technology, but
they will seize these instruments, which is why we see them as very
modern movements.
Then why are observers so quick to assume that a fundamentalist movement
is indeed espousing the fundamentals of its faith?
The average person doesn't understand that Catholicism and most of
Protestantism and Judaism are developing faiths -- development is built
into the first generation. Islam has a loyalty to every word of the
Koran, but its history has unfolded in different ways in different social
climates. The fundamentalist, however, says there was a moment in history
when a particular book, leader and original social community was perfect,
which in my opinion never existed. In the period of the early Christians,
Paul and Peter are fighting like mad in Acts already. But fundamentalists
teach that there was that perfect moment, and in their selective
retrieval they go back to that perfect moment. They say, ''We don't
change at all,'' and people say, ''Yeah, while all the other people are
compromising with modernity, these people really reach deep.'' But the
hymnity, the songs, the scriptural base -- it's all a very particular
interpretation, and the fundamentalist convinces us that it's always been
there.
What are the family similarities, as you've called them, of the
fundamentalist faiths?
First, every fundamentalism that we could find grew on soil that was
conservative, traditional, classical or orthodox. Then, something comes
along which is perceived by the people in such cultures as a total threat
to the group, to the world's future. They don't pick at little things.
Third, and this is a key feature, they then say, ''You must react.'' It
isn't about being conservative. The Amish are the most conservative
Protestants around, and they don't fight for the Lord. They just want you
to not butt in on them. But fundamentalists say you must react. You must
be the army of the Lord; you're failing God if you don't. Fourth, you
select those features from the past that you think will most effectively
fight off the threat and convince others of the threat.
Do the recent attacks give you pause in comparing Christian, Jewish,
Islamic and other fundamentalisms?
I couldn't be more emphatic than to say these fundamentalisms are very,
very different from one another. Then why study the form? Because we
wouldn't have noticed that they are not ''the old-time religion'' had we
not compared them. We wouldn't have noticed that they all use the
instruments of modernity so effectively. We wouldn't have noticed that
they are all extremely patriarchal. But some of my best friends are
Protestant fundamentalists. We are not saying that just because this form
of Islamic fundamentalism shoots at people, that other fundamentalist
people are waiting to do so also.
But with so many differences in the expressions of fundamentalisms, what
good are comparisons?
You can find out, among other things, what are the terms by which you can
help prevent people from finding the totalist position attractive, from
the frustration that leads into terrorism. The more ugly we are to them
the more easy it is for them to find recruits. I think that 20 to 30
years ago nonfundamentalists in America did make a great mistake by
typing them, by hillbillying and backwoodsing and holy-rollering them. It
was a terrible indignity; it was unfair to who they were. And if our
study can show that people of similar dispositions on many levels can
differ greatly in strategy tactics and goals, that's a lot better.
Paul Scott
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 14:20:56 BST