Fourth, the main target of many fundamentalist movements is
often a localform of modernized religion. This is quite obvious in
American fundamentalism—both Christian and to some degree Jew-
ish—which obviously cannot be a reaction to colonial or foreign influ-
ence but is very much directed against liberal versions of these creeds.
But we can observe the same phenomenon in other places. The mass
media's depiction of fundamentalist Islam or Hindu violence in India
would suggest that we are dealing here with a simple conflict between
external modernity on the one hand and internal tradition on the
other. But that is not the case. Both in Islam and in Hinduism for over
[296] a century there have been many popular movements that adapted reli-
gious norms to modern conditions. These movements were particu-
larly popular with educated, urban middle classes and therefore repre-
sented a real political danger for those whose authority is purely
grounded in religious hierarchies.
To sum up, then, fundamentalism is neither religion in excess nor
politics in disguise. It is an attempt to preserve a particular kind of
hierarchy based on coalition, when this is threatened by the percep-
tion of cheap and therefore likely defection. If courts-martial became
more lenient toward deserters and if this became known to soldiers in
action, I predict that the spontaneous and illicit search for and punish-
ment of potential deserters would become much more vicious and
demonstrative. The same psychology may explain why some people
are led to extreme violence in the service of their religious coalition.
The mental systems engaged are present in all normal minds, but the
historical conditions are special, which is why there is nothing
inevitable in this process. Not all religious concepts are used to create
ethnic markers, not all ethnic markers are used as coalitional signals,
not all coalitions are faced with cheap defection and not all members
of such a threatened coalition react by hiking the price of defection.
Indeed, the fact that the price is pushed so high clearly shows that
these groups are well aware that popular sentiment does not lean in
their direction. Which, unfortunately, is no obstacle to political domi-
nation if the coalitions are cohesive enough.
RELIGION EXPLAINED