extreme form of religious persuasion, this would not tell us anything
about the reasons why some people in some circumstances are led to
this particular version of their religious tradition. Also, the notion that
fundamentalists are simply lusting after power fails to tell us why they
seek it in that particularly dangerous, costly and often ineffective way. I
think the movements really are about religion—but describing them as
"fanaticism" just begs the question of what leads people to such behav-
ior—and they really are about power—but this does not tell us what
power these people are after and why this seems the only way to get it.
As I said, fundamentalism is a modernphenomenon and mostly a
reactionto new conditions. But this does not mean that the movements [293]
are justa reaction to modernity. Indeed, as many specialists have
pointed out, groups of this kind are not enemies of things modern in
general. They use modern mass media—schools, newspapers, radio
and television stations and the Internet—just as much as and often bet-
ter than other religious movements. Some of these movements create
schools and social networks for mutual help that make good use of all
the available machinery and resources of modern technology. There
must be other features of modernity that create this violent reaction.
An obvious solution would be that the modern world is one of stri-
dent cultural diversity, where you are constantly made aware that
other people live in different circumstances, have different values,
worship other gods, have different rituals. In this view the reaction is
mostly against religious and cultural competition, specially acute in
the case of Third World societies confronted with powerful, ex-colo-
nial Western influence. In this view, fundamentalists want to return to
a (largely mythical) past when local values and identity were taken for
granted, when no one was aware that there were other ways of living.
I think this view captures an essential feature of such movements—
competition really is the main point here—but we need to go further
in explaining the psychology of such reactions. For it is not totally
self-evident that people will naturally want to preserve the common
"cultural values" of their group. Why would that be the case? What is
the motivation? We commonly assume that people have a strong
desire to preserve their own cultural ways because these give them a
sense of identity and therefore of solidarity. But that is question-beg-
ging; as I said above, some cultural concepts and norms are used in
that way, in some conditions. You cannot just take for granted that
they all are, always. It is even less self-evident that this desire would
lead to violence, which is precisely what we want to explain.
WHYDOCTRINES, EXCLUSION AND VIOLENCE?