what the fundamentalist believes

Mitra Tabrizian

The most dangerous fundamentalism today is banking. Nevertheless, there are other fundamentalisms that harm us, as there always will be: religious, political, racial etc. Salman Rushdie has a beef with the religious variety; he wrote a book which caused a fatwa and sent him underground for at least a decade. He wrote the sentences below.

Fundamentalism comes from fear and increases it. The fundamentalists I have known are fearful; some see the world – and themselves – as hopelessly sinful, and act out of this corrupted, helpless milieu. They learn codas and truths – which are perfectly useful for moderate lives – but eventually make them too inflexible, too hard, to be useful for real life with real living people. The effects of fundamentalists in our communities are legion. They’re not just killing with bullets. The net effect is reduction of freedom and joy. We can all testify no doubt – to a different degree than…