Fundamentalism and Fanaticism

Fundamentalism and Fanaticism

By Mustafa kamal Sherwani
Sir, – The two expressions ‘religious fundamentalism’ and ‘religious fanaticism’ are often used interchangeably and those who use them as such do it either deliberately in order to confuse the one with the other or due to their lack of perception to demarcate the dividing line.
While religious fundamentalism is a constructive approach aimed at reviving the old, basic and unadulterated structure of a religion, religious fanaticism is nothing but a nefarious design to invoke the religious sentiments and to create the feelings of hatred between different religions for the objectives, alien to the religion as such.
Fundamentalism, in this context, implies a spirit of dedication to the religious values and comes closer to the sphere of spiritualism, whereas fanaticism is the exploitation of religion for purely materialistic gains. Religion has two mutually-contradictory qualities. In its true perspective, religion provides the greatest force to the human character, in its fanatical, superstitious or perverted form, it is the greatest human weakness. It is this latter form of religion which has prompted some atheists to claim that those who believe in religion can never progress or that religion teaches cowardice and fear. It will not be wrong to say that this form of religion has played a considerable role in encouraging the so-called philosophy of atheism.
However, the above metaphysical discussion poses a host of insurmountable problems when it is applied to the realities of how different religions function, what are their fundamental values and how they are interpreted in their relations with each other. Fundamentalism, as is clear from the very terminology of the word, is basically confined to the revival of the fundamental religious values and, as such, for initiating the process of fundamentalism of a particular religion, one is bound to analyse and look into those basic tenets which were obtaining at the time of its origin, the practices adopted by its worldly author who worked under the divine guidance.. As a necessary corollary of this, it is also essential to pinpoint the time in human history when a particular religion was brought into existence by the divine revelation, because the very word ‘religion’ presupposes the divine or supernatural touch otherwise it may be called a philosophy, a jurisprudential theory or a social movement.
At present each religion of the world has its innumerable and mutually-clashing ramifications, called sects or sub-sects. In some religions, these sects or sub-sects are based upon the differences about some subsidiary issues or upon the interpretation of one and the same text, while leaving the common fundamental principles, in some the fundamental principles themselves are the bone of contention and constitute the matter of differences. Thus, if the fundamentals are common, the process of fundamentalism, inter alia, means the process of unification by invoking those fundamentals in order to camouflage the subsidiary differences which cropped up subsequently. But if the fundamentals are not common, then the process of unification cannot be undertaken by way of fundamentalism. It is inevitably done by arousing the religious passions and by creating a hatred for other religions which can be described as religious fanaticism and this result is disturbing the social, communal and religious equilibrium of mutual co-existence and peaceful survival.
While religious fundamentalism revives the religious values of love and affection towards humans in general –the essence of almost every religion of the world – religious fanaticism creates mutual hatred and abhorrence. Religious fanaticism has nothing to do with the religious values and starts dominating the mind when the religious fundamentalism starts degenerating.
In a nutshell, fundamentalism is based upon the principle of internal purification, while fanaticism is directed towards external pollution. Observations have proved that to whichever religion a person may belong, the more religious-minded he is, the more respect he pays to other religions and more affectionate he is towards humans in general.
Mustafa kamal Sherwani
Northern India Patrika, Lucknow, December,4,1984

First published.
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