Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs.

Quotes

• The Pale Blue Dot (photograph) is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter-to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness.
  • Ann Druyan Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020)

• The term 'fundamentalist', which was coined in 1920, derives from the title of a series of tracts - The Fundamentals - published in the United States from 1910 to 1915. It has since been implicitly defined as meaning a person who believes that, since The Bible is the Word of God, every proposition in it must be true; a belief which, notoriously, is taken to commit fundamentalist Christians to defending the historicity of the accounts of the creation of the Universe given in the first two chapters of Genesis. On this understanding a fully believing Christian does not have to be fundamentalist. Instead it is both necessary and sufficient to accept the Apostles' and/or The Nicene Creed. In Islam, however, the situation is altogether different. For, whereas only a very small proportion of all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testaments are presented as statements made directly by God in any of the three persons of the Trinity, The Koran consists entirely and exclusively of what are alleged to be revelations from Allah (God). Therefore, with regard to The Koran, all Muslims must be as such fundamentalists; and anyone denying anything asserted in The Koran ceases, ipso facto, to be properly accounted a Muslim. Those whom the media call fundamentalists would therefore better be described as revivalists. This conceptual truth not only places a tight limitation upon the possibilities of developmental change within Islam, as opposed to the tacit or open abandonment of one or more of its original particular claims, but also opens up the theoretical possibility of falsifying the Islamic system as a whole by presenting some known fact which is inconsistent with a Koranic assertion.
  • Antony Flew, Turning away from Mecca (The Salisbury Review, Spring 1996) quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. [1]

• Fundamentalism is as foreign to Hinduism as honesty is to Christian missions.
  • Catholic ashrams S.R. Goel (1988, revised 1994)

• Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... and its faith-healing... are made to order for King Kid America.
  • Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, St. Martin's Press: 1990, page 33

• To speak of Hindu fundamentalism, is a contradiction in terms, it does not exist. Hinduism is not this kind of religion.
  • V.S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization

• When two-three different religions claim that only their own religions are true and all other religions are false, their religions are only ways to Heaven, conflicts can not be avoided. Thus, fundamentalism tries to abolish all other religions. This is called Bolshevism in religion. Only the path shown by the Hinduism can relieve the world from this meanness.
  • R. Tagore, `Aatmaparichapa' in his book `Parichaya'

• To speak of Hindu fundamentalism, is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals.
  • Shashi Tharoor, The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone. p. 64.

• If we define fundamentalism as movement that calls for a return to the original fundamentalisms of a certain doctrine, ideology or religion, then the term seems not appropriate to the Indian context, especially not appropriate to Hindusim because such a monistic fundament is not to be found in [this] . . . religion.
  • Nehring, 1994, Nehring, A. 1994. ‘Fundamentalism: A Radical Response to Post-Modern Secularism’, in A. Nehring (ed.), Fundamentalism and Secularism: The Indian Predicament, pp. 16–27. Chennai: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute. quoted in Pradip N. Thomas - Strong Religion, Zealous Media_ Christian Fundamentalism and Communication in India-Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd (2008) 28