Page 300 - Cultures and Organizations

Yesterday, Now, or Later? 269

Fundamentalisms as Short-Term Orientation

As argued earlier in this chapter, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three
Western religions belonging to the same thought family and having his-
torically grown from the same roots. All three derive Virtue from Truth.
All three have modern wings, focusing on the present, and fundamental-
ist wings, focusing on wisdom from the past. Religious fundamentalisms
represent the extreme short-term pole of the long-term versus short-term
dimension. Decisions are based not on what works today but on an inter-
pretation of what was written in the old holy books. Fundamentalisms are
unable to cope with the problems of the modern world. British philosopher
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) wrote:

All fanatical creeds do harm. This is obvious when they have to compete
with other fanaticisms, since in that case they promote hatred and strife.
But it is true even when only one fanatical creed is in the fi eld. It cannot
allow free inquiry, since this might shake its hold. It must oppose intel-
lectual progress. If, as is usually the case, it involves a priesthood, it gives
great power to a caste professionally devoted to maintenance of the intel-
lectual status quo, and to a pretence of certainty where in fact there is no
certainty. 79

Politically influential fundamentalisms that represent a threat to world
peace and prosperity exist within all three Western religions. The oppos-
ing modern wings are weakest in Islam. There was a period in history,
from about the ninth to the fourteenth century a.d., when the Muslim world
was not only militarily but also scientifically advanced, while Christian

Europe was backward. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, Chris-
tian countries embarked on the road to modernization, while the world of

Islam withdrew into traditionalism.
U.S. Islamologist Bernard Lewis has described the Muslim scholars
after the fourteenth century as having a “feeling of timelessness, that noth-
ing really changes,” and a lack of interest into what happened in the rest
of the world. Knowledge was seen as a “corpus of eternal verities which
could be acquired, accumulated, transmitted, interpreted and applied but
not modified or transformed.” Innovation was bad and similar to heresy.