In today’s session I would like to propose a suggestion as to why extremist religions exist, prevail, and propagate. In the first place, there is a presupposing on our part that when we examine a fundamentalist religion, we are examining a religion, namely, a religion that is either similar or based around the major surviving religions: Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In Buddhism several schools do accuse other teachings of being ‘incomplete religions’, that is, lacking certain aspects that the accusing school sees as essential to practice. The historical Buddha can be interpreted as having taught that the other schools of his day, while valid, were incomplete because, guess what! They were extreme in an ascetic sense or a nihilistic sense, they were also extreme in two spiritual polar opposites (there is either definitely a soul or the is definitely nothing, there can be nothing in between). I think conservative Catholicism has something similar too, regarding other Christian denominations as inferior or inadequate compared to the full revelation that the Catholic Church has received.
But is there not something profoundly lacking, profoundly incomplete in fundamentalist and extremist schools of thought? They for one lack common sense, you can hurt, intimidate, bully, persecute, or even kill whoever you don’t like as long as you say it’s in the name of the extremists’ god, ‘________’. Unlike many religions who do claim to have special tenets in love or charity (e.g. Mahayana Buddhism is quite unique in that it stresses benefiting and liberating all sentient beings, while as far as I’m aware Sufism is also acutely unique), however, extremist religions lack compassion, for both their own adherents as well as those who would much rather have nothing to do with them. That is why it’s difficult to call political religions ‘religions’ insofar as that they are created or maintained for the mere sake of keeping those in power. It’s lacking a detachment from politics, something that religions should try and do.
For example, I maintain that nationalism is not a good thing. I am Chinese but I have no loyalty to the political authority of China. I am studying in Australia but neither do I have any loyalty to the political authority there either! I don’t give a damn whether it’s democratic or tyrannical. The only loyalty to an ‘institution’ of any kind that I feel is to a spiritual institution (and even then it can get sticky, and I acknowledge that). The only place it has is in sports (and even then it could get ugly). Nationalism is the cause of a lot of bad things like racism and bigotry, and leads to oppression of cultures, nations, and races. Remember, goodness comes from the heart, not from the language that you speak.
Be wary of fundamentalist religions. They have not added anything unique to their brand of religion, but they have stripped away parts of a once recognizable religion into something of a rotting zombie. It might sound like I’m simply doing special pleading here, but there is a remarkable difference between a liberal Christian doctor who goes to Church every Sunday and volunteers at the local homeless shelter, and a redneck evangelical who actively attacks abortion clinics and attempts to ban teachers teaching science in schools so that they will teach creationism. Clearly, there is a peace, or at least amicability, found in the former Christian’s heart that the latter extremist lacks – big time.
Fundamentalism comes from fear and lack of flexibility, which of course isn’t compassion. Compassion accepts and allows.
A lot of the thoughts on enlightenment are unfortunately a bit dogmatic and fundamentalist. Sort of paradoxical!
Loving Awareness : A Journey to Wholeness
Huston Smith says the problem is that we’ve become an argument culture rather than a conversational culture. There is very little middle ground. It is either/or. And there are basically two fundamentalisms in Western culture: that which is found in religion, and that which is found in secular modernity. The fundamentalist secular culture is every bit as demanding, vocal and combatitive as is fundamentalist religion. And it is secular modernism that has provoked religious fundamentalism. It is militant secularism that has created fundamentalism. It says that religion is simple-minded, backward-minded and bad while science is forward looking and good.
The prejudice inherent in all fundamentalism: “We are right and you are wrong” is something we can find in every single one of us. We always have to make sure we understand the reasons for error and see if they might be involved with matters we are involved with. Because almost always, what we implicate “out there” is something that can be implicated within as well.
We need to learn to listen and this is not at all the same as being tolerant. Tolerance is condescending. Understanding is far better.
I couldn’t have put it a better way. I really think you hit the jackpot with the observation that Western culture always demands a “for or against” mindframe. I observe this is my friends, I observe this in society and human relations, and I observe this in academic, economic, and political circles.