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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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Page 6
The revolt of these militant preservers of orthodoxy and tradition points out fundamentalism's principal characteristic: its seeming rejection of modernization''seeming,'' because certain fundamentalist groups are only too willing to use, and in many instances are quite expert at using, the most advanced technologies of the modern era. This is particularly evident in the United States, where tele-vangelists skillfully manipulate the mass media to great advantage. And Moral Majority lobbyists, demonstrate their state-of-the-art lobbying skills by effectively using computer listings and direct mailings. In Israel, representatives of the Ultra-Orthodox reject modernity, yet appear on the country's only TV network to promote their views. In Iran, followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini shrewdly used tape recorders and cassettes to undermine the shah, and continue to employ sophisticated progandistic techniques to solidify their hold on the modern state apparatus. Nevertheless, there is little question that the faithful regard modernity, along with its values based on secularist Enlightenment thought, as the chief threat to varying forms of fundamentalism the world over.
Universally, an inevitable tension exists between the scientific nature of modernization and all orthodox religions. While most religions are able to adjust, some observersand Bassam Tibi (1988) goes the furthest hereassert that Islam is by definition incompatible with the technological-scientific culture of the modern world. By rejecting the principles of tolerance, rationality, and secularity, a major strand of Islam condemns itself to remaining a preindustrial culture, thereby defending against the introduction of foreign elements (i.e., modernity). Since modernity can never satisfy the human search for spirituality, the Egyptian Sunni theorist Sayyid Qutb argued that modernity would have to be vigorously opposed. Similar sentiments have often been expressed by Shi'ite leaders.
A theme reiterated by Third World Islamic fundamentalists is the "failure of the West," by which they mean that the Euro-American emphasis on materialism, luxury, and consumerism has led to the destruction of human values and resulted in moral decay, including the breakdown of family structures and the spread of pornography. This is why Khomeini, in his famous 1989 letter to Gorbachev, warned about exchanging materialistic Marxism for the equally, or
 
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perhaps worse, species of materialism associated with the Western way of life. "I strongly urge you," he wrote shortly before his death, "that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan" (quoted in Esposito, 1990).
To be sure, this vigorous rejection of a heartless "Westoxication" was a key ideological element of the Shi'ite revolution in Iran. Some of these themes, including an attack on individualistic materialism, can be found among the Gush Emunim faithful in Israel. This is an interesting sharing of views by extremist Jews and Muslims, and not the only instance where radical branches of these two Middle Eastern religions coincide. Curiously, U.S. fundamentalists stand alone in this regard by virtue of their eager acceptance of the "American way of life," which includes many of the individualistic values decried by their counterparts elsewhere (e.g., consumerism, good living, and individualism).
Although a modern industrialized society would seem to be a highly desirable long-range goal, it does not inevitably improve the living standards of a country's population. From the days of England's "satanic mills," there has always been a price to pay in human suffering during the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial and urban one. But in this century, especially in the Third World, economic progress often breeds rural impoverishment and urban blight on a dimension not previously experienced in the West. Moreover, the ills befalling these newly urbanizing societiesamong them slums, homelessness, malnutrition, and crimecontinue indefinitely, indeed seem to be permanent results of the modernization process.
The societal dislocation that inevitably accompanies industrialization and urban growth has long been a source of social discontent. Going back at least to Durkheim, in the late nineteenth century, social theorists have long recognized that the breakdown of rural community life leaves rootless people with problems of identity, nostalgic for past associations, and susceptible to simplistic alternatives to anomie. In the 1930s the consequences of rootlessness often manifested themselves in nativistic and totalitarian movements. Recent comparative treatments of the Iranian Revolution
 
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and Abrahamian's essay in this volume is one of the most originalhave found similarities between the generalized Shi'ite message and twentieth-century fascism as well as an authoritarian form of populism (see Chapter 6; and also Cole and Keddie, 1986). Accordingly, scholars have observed that in many Middle Eastern countries new arrivals to the cities become the most fervent adherents of the fundamentalist message.
One by-product of urbanization which a traditional rural population finds difficult to accept is the changing role played by women. Herein lies an important explanation for orthodox religions' opposition to an essential ingredient of the modernization process: they fervently resent all attempts made to liberate women. For if it is true that an important index for the progress of humanity is measured by the equality of the sexesas nineteenth-century socialists like Fourier, Saint Simon, and Engels suggestedthen fundamentalist religions are distinctly premodern. Indeed, with very few exceptions, fundamentalists react with great negative emotion to women's liberation, and their unmistakable hysteria must be seen as central to the "true believer's" fanaticism. Unfortunately, it is an aspect that rarely gets the attention it deserves.
In the United States, the Moral Majority and their cohorts oppose the Equal Rights Amendment and the option of a woman's choice to terminate pregnancy. But this level of interference with the rights of women pales when compared to the restrictions placed on women in traditionalist Muslim countries. The repressiveness becomes even more severe when fundamentalists are in power, as in Saudi Arabia, in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, and in the regime of the ayatollahs. For the Scripturalist, Muslim women are insatiable beings who must be controlled in behavior and dress; according to this mindset, an unveiled woman is essentially naked. Thus, if women are not closely monitored and carefully supervised, they will lead males down Satan's road of perdition, first undermining the family, which in turn will destroy the very foundations of the Muslim community.
The extent of Ayatollah Khomeini's hostility toward women has not been given adequate attention in general treatments of fundamentalism. This traditional point of view goes way beyond the call to restore the veil, and is among the most retrograde found in main-
 
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stream Islamic thought. Some of his ideas border on the bizarre. That women, in his teaching, are to be totally subservient to their husband's will needs hardly be stressed. But he goes further: men should not accept their wives' claims to be menstruating or entering menopause as justifications for avoiding sex. Rather, husbands should be guided by some arbitrary calculations that the ayatollah himself has contrived in order to overcome the wiles of their women. There are other strange opinions offered on such intimate concerns as vaginal discharges and the suitability of oral sex. In civil matters women are to be discriminated against in various ways. For instance, two female witnesses are the equivalent of one male. With the reintroduction of the medieval concept of "blood justice," the killing of a man is considered a capital crime, but a woman's murder is not of the same dimension and would rarely result in equivalent penalties (Afshar, 1982). Another example of radical Islam's bias against women can be found in Afghanistan and Dr. Valentine Moghadam makes a strong case for the centrality of this issue (see Chapter 7).
A troubling corollary of fundamentalism's general negativity toward modern women is the fact that the movement seems to be most popular among lower-class women, who for various reasons feel threatened by the options and flexibility modern society has to offer. The strongest adherents in the United States are elderly rural women, while in the Middle East first-generation urban females provide the largest single group consistently devoted to Islamic fundamentalism. One of the greatest ironies connected with the overthrow of the shah was that even middle-class, liberated women served the revolution in various capacities, especially in large demonstrations, and in this regard helped to bring about their own downfall. But they were not the only progressive forces in Iran who failed to predict the viciousness of a radical Islamic regime supported by the instruments of modern control (another irony), and consequently to suffer in the aftermath, for as mentioned above, there were no recent historical precedents to guide them.
A further explanation for the overwhelming support given by liberated women and other secularists to a revolution led by militant Muslims was its populist orientation, whose generalized appeal focused on the oppressiveness of a shah allied to Western imperialism.
 
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All previous forms of protest against the government having been eliminated, radical Islam proved to have remarkable staying power, not easily eradicated even by Savak's modern techniques of repression. In the end it became a most effective mobilizing ideology. The statements of its spokesmen were vague and diffuse enough to appeal to different classes in Iranian society, permitting the country's disaffected elements to unite behind the clerical faction, which ultimately became the only group capable of rallying the masses.
In this connection, Professor Sivan's essay (see Chapter 5) demonstrates how religion in Iran preserved a key aspect of civil society against the onslaughts of the shah's modernizing hegemony, thereby providing the basis for eventual rebellion. Sivan's sophisticated use of a Gramscian thesis is extremely suggestive, for it offers possible explanations as to how certain oppositional ideologies can survive in authoritarian societies. This is particularly true of traditional religions, with which a generally repressive state might be reluctant to tamper: an example of this phenomenon is the continued existence of Roman Catholicism in Communist Poland as a viable unassimilative institution. And the survival of a fractious, long-smoldering nationalism which has reemerged vigorously in present-day Eastern Europe can also be appreciated within Sivan's formulation.
Another reason that fundamentalist religions persist in authoritarian state settings is that the "true believer's" penchant for martyrdom provides constant evidence of unshakable dedication. Considering the temptations for co-option and compromise within the dominant modern culture, outward manifestations of idealism combined with the sufferings of a number of martyrs prove to be extremely compelling, winning support for the movement. In almost every country studied, the "armed prophets" of religion, like those Arthur Hertzberg describes in Israel, gain the respect of elements in the general population who are not necessarily committed to their scriptural interpretations (see Chapter 8). To be sure, only in the materialistic American culture can TV evangelists openly display their enormous wealth and yet present themselves as dedicated servants of God.
One tendency shared by fundamentalists who impact on politics is their ability to move the political agenda further to the right, indi-
 
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cating their invariably conservative, if not reactionary, influence. Fundamentalists, by definition, are anti-Communists, and anti-Socialists as well. With Communism on the decline throughout most of the world, Catholic Integralists now regard Liberation Theology as an equally dangerous doctrine to be forcefully opposed. In Israel, both the Gush Emunim faithful, with their special brand of innovative fundamentalism, and the traditionalist Neturei Karta, have had a distinct conservative impact on their country's politics (see Menachem Friedman's article, Chapter 9). The appellation most frequently used for fundamentalists in the United States is "the new Christian right." Steve Bruce demonstrates in his book (1988) how the formation of the Moral Majority was a conscious design of right-wing secular Republicans to further their political goals. For in this country the successful promotion of noneconomic values as political issues has enabled conservatives to win electoral victories from a population whose awareness of its own self-interests is underdeveloped. In many ways, the flourishing existence of a new Christian right in the United States best exemplifies fundamentalism as political manipulation.
It can be argued similarly that Islamic fundamentalism, especially in its Shi'ite version, permits a traditionally minded clergy to manipulate the masses for its own advantage. Because the Islamic clerics and scholars are the only "experts" in the content of the sacred texts, they have become a privileged elite, ready to carry out in practice "the exact meaning" of said texts. It follows, therefore, that the monopoly of state power can be entrusted only to these men, who become the religious equivalents of Lenin's vanguard party. The results of their successes, from a political perspective, are equally undemocratic. If we choose here to paraphase Marx when he said that history occurs first as tragedy and then as farce, we would not do justice to the sorrowful manifestations of revolutionary terrorism in its Islamic configuration.
As a generation disillusioned by the experiences of command societies, we can quickly recognize that those who stand to gain from a return to "fundamentals" are those who present themselves as the sole authorities on scriptural interpretation. Ironically, nowhere do these sacred texts (i.e., the Koran) discuss such a role for the clergy. In
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