at times, shaded into terrorism. 5) To explain the various moments of decline,
ressentementand terrorism, I will attempt to show how the syntheses of Marx
and Weber by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, further informed by
Freud, provide crucial insights.
From Islam to Islamism
Sociology represented the attempt of post Enlightenment society to become
conscious of itself as a society and valorize its dominant values of Reason
and Progress. Its theories of sequential, progressive development assumed
that religion would decline in the face of science and Reason. Marx and Weber
suggested that while religion had played a major role in human history, its
power was on the wane. These early versions of secularization theory were
ultimately confirmed, in Western Europe. While rationality has been essen-
tial for the rise and legitimation of Western modernity, the irrationality of its
rationality dehumanizes the person, fragments the social and disenchants the
world while its hubris of progress leaves people bereft of transcendental
meanings. Religions, however, provide a number of emotional gratifications
through integration into an identity-granting community of meaning with
powerful rituals, while providing believers with explanations of adversity,
means of assuaging hardships, and often promises of a better life to come.
As events have shown, proclaiming the demise of religion was a bit pre-
mature, especially given the wide spread rise of fundamentalism that would
seem to belie the predictions of decline. Fundamentalist religion can be under-
stood as a critique of rationality, a rejection of its efficient, albeit sterile, world-
view, as well as an alternative framework of belief and action. That said,
fundamentalism fosters moral and cultural barriers to goal rationality that
refluxes back upon the society and in turn sustains poverty, ignorance, ill-
ness degradation and breeds a corrosive atmosphere that, unchecked, legit-
imates terrorism, the violence of non state actors. Fundamentalisms can be
seen in Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu forms.^2 These fundamentalisms
have condoned if not fostered violence and killing. But today, Islamic fun-
damentalism, Islamism, or political Islam has become the most important
expression. Political Islam seeks control of States in order to impose its reli-
giously extreme worldviews and agenda. It readily uses violence and destruc-
288 • Lauren Langman
(^2) This is not to ignore various secular fundmentalisms from Maoism on the left to
the free market visions of the right.