Islamic fundamentalism

[Alex Bragi]

Excellent thread, Tom—very thought provoking.

I also agree completely with ID, "breaking the rules" is, ironically, what all fundamentalists seem to have in common. That, and a very narrow-minded attitude that what they believe is totally right and what everyone else beleives is totally wrong. As physicist and Nobel laureate Stephen Weinberg once said: "“Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion”. Unfortunately, I believe he’s right.

However, I can’t agree with this assessment: “But Karen Armstrong aptly points out that fundamentalism is already on the way out and was mostly a 50'ies to 80'ies phenomena. Today fundamentalists are a fringe movement in all parts of the world including the middle-east.”

You need not look further than the USA’s “Bible Belt” (where the separation of Church and State has become so blurred), to realise how strong fundamentalist Christianity is today and, more importantly, how politically powerful it’s become.