Fundamentalism Debated

Abstract

In the introduction, we have observed that scholars have been unable to agree whether ‘fundamentalism’ is a useful analytical term or rather a dangerous generalisation. I have suggested that much of the diatribe on the term ‘fundamentalism’ arises because scholars have mainly debated it as a ‘real thing’: in other words an entity affecting, conditioning and inducing specific behaviours in individuals and, in particular, groups. Similarly, during the past 20 years, the debate on fundamentalism has mainly focused on what produces the phenomenon ‘fundamentalism’ rather than why people develop certain patterns of ideas and practices that have been often labelled as ‘fundamentalism’. This attempt to answer mainly the ‘what’ question, while leaving the ‘why’ aside, has produced a rather taxonomic understanding of ‘fundamentalism’.