The Tragedy Of Religious Fundamentalism

The Mideast (including North Africa) has been the world’s hotspot for more than two decades. There’s been great suff ering in many, perhaps most, of these nations. Although it’s too early to declare failure, the Arab Spring has been a tragedy in some nations and has not yet succeeded anywhere. Furthermore, the region threatens the entire world with everything from terrorism to energy insecurity to nuclear war.

It’s often said that extreme religion has a lot to do with these problems. I want to present evidence supporting this view, and put it into broader context.

I’ve written in previous columns about Gregory Paul’s analysis of religion and social conditions, published in 2009 in the peer-reviewed journal Evolutionary Psychology.

Paul studied 25 social indicators (such as per capita homicides and adolescentpregnancies) and 9 religious fundamentalism indicators (such as biblical literalism, creationist beliefs, and absolute certainty that God exists) in the world’s 17 most prosperous large nations. He found a clear correlation between fundamentalism and social dysfunction across all 17 nations. The United States was an extreme example, being by far the most fundamentalist and by far the most socially dysfunctional of the 17. It’s important to note that the religious indicators measured each nation’s degree of religious fundamentalism; it didn’t measure liberal religion.

The study shows that, atleast among economically prosperous nations, fundamentalism is tightly linked to social dysfunction.

There are 12 large (more than 10 million people) nations in the Mideast (including North Africa): Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen. All are 93 to 100 percent Islamic.

It’s fair to classify all of these nations as strongly fundamentalist, as that word is defined by Paul’s indicators. For example, 30 percent of Americans are biblical literalists. It’s pretty obvious that far more than 30 percent in these 12 nations believe that the Koran is literally true. Thus, these nations are surely far more fundamentalist than even the U.S. (the most fundamentalist of the 17 prosperous nations).

As further evidence, consider the outrage in the Mideast about Salmon Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” which wassaid to mock the Islamic faith. I haven’t read the book, but I doubt it’s any more anti-Islamic than Nikos Kazantzakis’ 1960 novel “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film based on the same book, are anti-Christian. Kazantzakis’ novel gathered little Christian ire, but Scorsese’s fi lm version stirred up a French Christian fundamentalist group which launched Molotov cocktails inside the theater showing the film, injuring 13 with four severely burned.

An archbishop condemned the film and several nations banned it. But the fi lm was widely supported by critics, the public and some religious leaders.

Contrast this with the reception to Rushdie’s novel - and imagine the much stronger reaction to any fi lm based on the novel. In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa off ering a reward of a million dollars for the death of Rushdie and calling on Muslims toexecute all those involved in the novel’s publication.

There were more than a dozen bombings protesting the book, including burning down a conference hotel in Turkey, killing 37, and 12 dead plus 40 wounded in a riot in Bombay, India.

Six were killed and 100 injured in riots against the American Cultural Center in Islamabad, Pakistan. The fatwa and rich bounties calling for Rushdie’s murder continue in force today.

So it’s fair to say that the 12 large Mideastern nations are strongly fundamentalist, certainly more so than the U.S. In view of the tight relation between fundamentalism and social dysfunction, it shouldn’t surprise us that most of these nations are mired in various degrees of war, terrorism, authoritarianism, political and religious strife, poverty, and human rights abuses.

There are also other causes, especially colonialism and poverty, but extreme fundamentalism seems primary.

Note that my argument here is not against Christianity or Islam, but against fundamentalism in any religious faith. Moderate, non-literalist interpretations of the ancient religious manuscripts does not seem to pose a problem.

The Arab Spring off ered hope for relief from this region’s medieval brew of dysfunctional beliefs, a brew that’s similar to Christian beliefs a few centuries ago.

Change is hoped for and possible. Despite rocky going in nations such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey, there is reason for hope in these and perhaps other Mideast nations. Surely people everywhere will begin to understand that extreme religion, far from a source of hope, is a primary source of tragedy. Healthy democracy and fundamentalism are incompatible.

ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.