Islamist fundmentalismIslamic fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Europe
A comprehensive new comparative study of religious dispositions among European Muslims and Christians finds that between 40 percent and 45 percent of European Muslims have fundamentalist religious ideas. The percentage goes down among the young and among individuals with higher social and economic status. A PEW Research Center study, using the same criteria for fundamentalism, found that Islamic fundamentalists make up slightly more than 30 percent of U.S. Muslims. Only 4 percent of European Christians are fundamentalists. Fundamentalist beliefs among both Muslims and Christians are closely associated with hostility toward other out-groups, including homosexuals, Jews, and Westerners (in the case of Muslims) or Muslims (in the case of Christians) – but violence does not necessarily form part of a fundamentalist ideology (thus, the Jewish Neturei Karta of the Christian Amish are at the same time among the most fundamentalist religiously and the most violence-averse). The research quotes other studies which found that between 10 percent and 15 percent of European Muslims are prepared to use violence to defend their faith, but that the increase in the propensity for violence among Muslim fundamentalists is a relatively recent phenomenon — of the last two or three decades.
Last week’s attacks in Paris, committed in the name of a god, reopen a badly healed scar in Europe. The world once again turns toward religious fundamentalism. A new study shows that hostility toward other out-groups is not an isolated phenomenon among Muslims living in Europe; but nor is it a synonym of violence. According to the author of the study, Ruud Koopmans, director of the WZB Berlín Social Science Center, “Islam is not the problem.”
The attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo — which sold five million copies of its latest issue around the world on Wednesday, 14 January — was not merely an act of aggression against freedom of expression and against human life; it was also an attack on the religious values of a large majority of Muslims living in the European Union, whose ideals are peaceful and even flexible among the youngest members of the community.
A release from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) reports that for Ruud Koopmans, author of a study published in early January in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and director of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, religious fundamentalism is defined in three ways:
- that believers should return to the eternal and unchangeable rules laid down in the past
- that these rules only allow one interpretation and are binding for all believers
- that religious rules should have priority over secular laws
The sociologist insists that religious fundamentalism — also interpreted as strict religiosity — is an ideology, that is a set of ideas which refer to attitudes toward the way of viewing life.
“Fundamentalism does not necessarily include or justify violence, as this is a form of behavior and not an ideology,” explains Koopmans.
He compares this fundamentalism with fascism and communism, other ideologies that are not synonymous with violence.
Nevertheless, “religious fundamentalism may encourage radicalization. In general, it should not imply violence, although out-group hostility may be evident,” he says.
Religious fundamentalism, however, is not unique to Islam: the term originated with a Protestant movement in the early twentieth century in the United States, which propagated a return to the “fundaments” of the Christian faith and to a literal interpretation of the rules of the Bible.
