Table Of ContentSECOND EDITION
si unamentan
JEWISH |
#
MOVEMENTS
Picard t.
anton
UNDERSTANDING
FUNDAMENTALISM
SECOND ED iaivens
auicuatenz0H" |
7 = Me LATA sat
UNDERSTANDING
FUNDAMENTALISM
SECOND EDITION
COHERoT IIATS N t es G
Jewis M*O"N "ESM ENTS
Richard T. Antoun
ROW MAN "Cl T PEEFYEDRD Ss eeedlale aa ING.
Lanham e Boulder « NewYork « Tor e Plymouth, UK
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Antoun, Richard T.
Understanding fundamentalism : Christian, Islamic, and Jewish movements / Richard T.
Antoun. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-6208-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-6208-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-6209-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-6209-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Religious fundamentalism. I. Title.
BL238.A58 2008
200.9'04—dc22 2007047630
Printed in the United States of Americ
CPoenieet ntt tte s
CHAPTER THREE: The Past in the Present:
“Traditioning,” the Proof-Text, and the Covenant ............. 55
CHAPTER FOUR: Three Strategies in the Quest
for Purity? See I ee, See Re erin e pres ee ee sees 73
CHAPTER FIVE: Activism and Totalism ................... 85
CHAPTER SIX: Selective Modernization and
Controlled Acculturation .......0..0.... c.ece. e.ee. .ee e 117
CHAPTER SEVEN: Transnational Religion before and
after 9/11: Muslims in Western Europe and Afghanistan ....... 133
GIOINTEINGTES
HOSS ANN Mi oo coh te ee Ee Be Rat OO Mite an ea et tis
Supgestions jor Purther Reading < ss. en ee ee oe eee 179
TENE Ne eevee ees a REE heen PTOI, Son Neos esa ed 185
ADOUERENG VAMLNOT ©S hes Air S eee t eve Bie acta Ieee 191
vi
Px-rivsted noiwe
In evaluating any book it is important for the reader to know who wrote
it and how it came to be. I am a professional social anthropologist who
has been conducting research in the Middle East, on and off, for almost
four decades, mainly in Jordan, to a lesser degree in Iran, and peripherally
in Egypt and Lebanon. | am also an American professor who came of age
in the comfortable and relatively secure post-World War II period, part
of a nation that subsequently waged one “cold” and three “hot” wars; a
nation that moved, ever more rapidly and cumulatively, from a radio to a
television to an audiotape/VCR to a computer/cell phone/Internet civi-
lization. This book reflects these facts.
What is an anthropological perspective? An anthropological perspec-
tive takes seriously what people say and do and tries to understand their
sayings and doings in their own terms without judging their “truth” or
“falsity.” This attitude does not imply that one has to surrender one’s own
beliefs, but it does imply that one has to appreciate other perspectives.
The anthropologist aims for empathy rather than sympathy.
The social anthropologist focuses on what (all) the people say and
do and not just on what the specialists (who are often elites) say and
do. In the case at hand this implies that popular religion is as much a
subject of our study as specialist religion. This book is not just about
religion as interpreted by ministers, priests, rabbis, and ’ulema (Muslim
religious scholars/leaders); it is also about religion as believed and prac-
ticed by laypersons. After recording what people say and do the social
Vil
PREFACE
anthropologist seeks to explain or interpret what she or he has ob-
served or recorded in some framework (e.g., universalistic, relativistic,
evolutionist). The-framework of interpretation chosen here is compar-
ative and the central explanatory concept is fundamentalism.
Rather than questionnaires, surveys, or statistical analysis (although
these techniques are also employed), participant observation is the key
technique of the social anthropological perspective. That is, the anthro-
pologist lives among the people being studied on a day-to-day basis, and
through systematic observation and interaction over an extended period
(initially for at least a year) records their way of life. In this case I have
done so intensively only for Muslims in Jordan and Iran. For Christians
and Jews I have drawn on my own observations as a member of American
society over a lifetime as well as on scholarly and journalistic accounts of
others who have written based on participant observation.
The subject of this book, fundamentalism, necessarily requires an ori-
entation toward religion. For the social anthropologist, religion is based
on genuine experience and not superstition (as for instance was the case
for Sigmund Freud).! Anthropologists differ on the content of that expe-
rience: affective collective experience; the structure of interpersonal re-
lations in the family; the cognitive and expressive problems of suffering,
evil, and bafflement; or dreams.” Anthropologists consider religion true
for other than theological reasons. That is, religion is based on genuine
human experience, whether cognitive, emotional, or instrumental, and
in that sense authentic. In their professional work, anthropologists do not
endorse or deny the theological claims of particular religions (although,
of course, they have their own beliefs). This conclusion leads us to an-
other, namely, that anthropologists take a phenomenal rather than a
noumenal view of religion. This means that they recognize that they are
viewing religious belief and practice as outsiders and therefore are always
at several removes from any “true account” of religious experience.
Finally, an anthropological view of religion must consciously take stock
of the “self” in any research as much as the “other” that is studied. In the
new “critical anthropology” that has become part of the anthropologist’s
craft at the end of the century, he or she must recognize the impact of the
researcher’s background/biases on the description and analysis produced.
Viii
