Fundamentalism and the War on Terror

The current conflict that engages our world is not an economic struggle, though there are certainly economic issues and triggers. It is an ideological one. It is about meaning. And I would suggest, it is about paths to meaning that cannot—or at least will not—coexist on the same planet.

After September 11, 2001, historian Karen Armstrong added another preface to her yet one year old book on the history of fundamentalism, The Battle For God, which included these words.

The apocalypse of September 11 can be seen as the logical outcome to the history of fundamentalism described in this book. Fundamentalism is not a conscious archaism, as people often imagine; it is not a throwback to the past. These fundamentalists are essentially modern movements that could take root in no other time than our own. This was the most devastating fundamentalist attack yet committed against secular modernity, and the terrorists could not have chosen more significant targets. Never have fundamentalists made more skillful use of the modern media than of September 11: Alerted by the crash of the first plane, millions of people were already in front of their television screens in time to watch the second plane plunging into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The fundamentalists used the modern technology of aviation to bring down magnificent buildings that had seemed like a modern Babel—built in defiance of nature. To a fundamentalist, such structures could seem a human challenge to the supremacy of God.…For decades, those who enjoy and appreciate the benefits of modernity and those fundamentalists who recoil from modern society with visceral disgust gazed at one another over an abyss of incomprehension. The September 11 atrocity simply revealed how deep that fissure of understanding was and how dangerous this division had become. This was not a clash of civilizations. Fundamentalism had always been an intra-societal dispute. As if to underline this fact, the American Christian fundamentalists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson almost immediately proclaimed that the tragedy had been a judgment of God for the sins of the secular humanists in the United States—a viewpoint that was not far removed from that of the Muslim hijackers. (Armstrong, 2001, viii)

This section is set apart to hold articles and essays about the War on Terror or the clash of Fundamentalism.

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