Religious Fanatics

They are Everywhere

By Kalinga Seneviratne

The threat from religious fundamentalists is not merely coming from the Islamic world, it is also emanating from the United States and Israel. The strongest supporters of the Bush administration in the United States are Christian fundamentalists who believe in the biblical prophecy that Jerusalem needs to come completely under Israeli occupation for the second coming of Christ. This religious fundamentalist belief is helping to fuel the conflict in the Middle East, while international media attention is distracted towards the Islamic fundamentalist threat to world peace.

This was the message from three speakers at a forum on religious fundamentalism yesterday.

Professor Denis Brutus from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States warned that what is happening in that country today is a very dangerous attack on the freedom of the peoples of the world.

"There is in the U.S. a very powerful religious force that has a special pre-occupation," he explained. "They use the Bible, the Old Testament, to say that the end of the world is coming. Armageddon (in northern Israel) is where the final battle will take place and the rapture will take all believers up to heaven."

"What is worrying," continued the professor, "is that Jerusalem is at the centre of (this belief) and (the fundamentalists believe) it should be completely under Israeli governance. This segment of the U.S. population is urging Bush to support the Israeli government and the army to conquer the whole territory."

Brutus pointed out that this Christian fundamentalist segment of the U.S. population has become so powerful today because "they stole the (2000) elections" for Bush and they have got a president in the White House with an IOU (I owe you).

Sherif Herata, an 80-year-old activist from Egypt agreed with the professor’s assessment and even went a step further claiming that it is "Christian-Jewish fundamentalism" that is fuelling the neo-liberal global capitalist model. He argued that Islamic fundamentalism could be seen as the other side of this neo-liberal capitalist globalisation where people who are suffering from poverty and misery think, that through religion, they can solve every problem.

"Religious fundamentalism is the most dangerous evil we have today," said Herata. But he argues that religion gives people a message of hope and a desire to live in a better world. "When they can't understand the forces that are pushing changes happening around them -- such as the activities of multinational companies, use of foreign military might -- they get confused. They have lost faith in the political parties to help them out, so they turn to what is familiar to them -- their religion, which they understand traditionally."

But rather than seeing the religious fundamentalists as enemies, activists need to win over their rank-and-file to fight global neo-liberal capitalism.

"It is totally defamatory to say (religious) fundamentalists are all Arabs and Muslims," thundered Raji Sourani, director of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, to loud cheers.

"Fundamentalism is a real disease we need to uproot as civilised people of this world," he added. Pointing out that when people talk about Israel they talk about the only state in the world whose existence is justified by "a promise by God".

"If this is not fundamentalism, then what can it be?" he asked the audience some 5,000, which proved overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestinian situation.

In a moving and emotional speech, interrupted a number of times by applause, Sourani who lives in the occupied territories, went on to argue that it is Israeli Jewish religious fundamentalism that is standing in the way of the implementation of international human rights law in Palestine. And since the September 11 attacks in the United States, Islamic fundamentalism has been used to paint Israeli occupiers as victims and Palestinians as terrorists.

"We have a real battle with not the church in the U.S., but Christian-Zionists there, and we need to hear more and more voices from around the world in support of the Palestinian people," Sourani said.