Religious fundamentalism and utopianism in the 21st century

Abstract

Why is it so difficult to respond to religious fundamentalism from within a liberal paradigm? This paper explores a core problem within religious fundamentalism, stemming from its relationship to the phenomenon of utopianism. This is a complex relationship, which occurs on several different levels, including the content of fundamentalist visions (religious fundamentalisms contain utopian visions of the good life), and its structural paradigm (utopianism and fundamentalism both stem from discontent with the now, challenge cornerstones of their contemporaneous world, and desire radically different alternatives). Of greatest concern is an attachment to perfection, which permits a malign form of utopianism to propel religious actors into a politics of ‘divinely sanctioned’ violence.

Notes

 1. This paper is dedicated to these students, in acknowledgement of the value of curiosity.

 2. Thanks are due to Lyman Tower Sargent and to the journal's anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

 3. For a useful selection of key texts from this tradition, see M. Festenstein and M. Kenny, Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

 4. See, for example, J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

 5. See, for example, J. Locke, ‘An essay on toleration’, in M. Goldie (Ed), Locke, Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and J.S. Mill, On Liberty (London: Everyman, 1910).

 6. See, for example, the entry for utopia in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: ‘1) An imaginary or hypothetical place or state of things considered to be perfect; a) a condition of ideal (esp. social) perfection. b) An imaginary distant region or country. 2. An impossibly ideal scheme, esp. for social improvement.’ And ‘utopian: ‘1. Pertaining to, or characteristic of, a Utopia; advocating or constituting an ideally perfect state; impossibility ideal, visionary, idealistic. 2. Having no known location, existing nowhere.’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 3534. Meanings 1b (for ‘utopia’) and 2 (for ‘utopian’) are comparatively rare in vernacular usage.

 7. L.T. Sargent, ‘Three faces of utopianism revisited’, Utopian Studies, 5 (1), 1994, pp. 1–37. For examples of the terms being used in these ways, see other key texts in the field, including: R. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Hemel Hempstead: Philip Allan, 1990); J.C. Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); B. Goodwin and K. Taylor, The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice (London: Hutchinson, 1982); and T. Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (New York and London: Methuen, 1986).

 8. See G. Claeys and L.T. Sargent, The Utopia Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

 9. T. More ‘Utopia’, in E. Surtz and J. Hexter (Eds), The Complete Works of St. Thomas More Vol. 4 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 185.

10. Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 7.

11. Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 7., p. 3.

12. Levitas, op. cit., Ref. 7.

13. Levitas, op. cit., Ref. 7.

14. See D. Suvin ‘On the poetics of the science fiction genre’, College English, 34 (3), 1972, p. 375; D. Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 49. See also D. Suvin ‘Defining the literary genre of utopia: Some historical semantics, some genealogy, a proposal, and a plea’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 6 (2), 1973, pp. 121–145, and K. Kumar, Utopia and Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).

15. See, for example, Davis, op. cit., Ref. 7, and Goodwin and Taylor, op. cit., Ref. 6.

16. See, for example, Moylan, op. cit., Ref. 7, and T. Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (Oxford: Westview Press, 2000), and L. Sargisson, Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression (London: Routledge, 2000).

17. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, I suggest that utopianism is expressed in many forms (Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986)). For Bloch, utopianism is an impulse towards the better life, and his three volume Principle of Hope includes discussions of daydreams, wishful thinking and more familiar socio-political utopian projects. Bloch does not say that utopianism is everywhere, but he suggests that it can be found in fictional accounts of a better world, social and political theory, lived experiments, works of art, music, medicine and architecture. Some utopias are conceptual or abstract and some take a concrete form. Discontented with the now and desiring a better tomorrow, utopias imagine better worlds and different ways of being and this is expressed in many different ways.

18. Firstly, this scholarship is context-specific—set in time—and these definitions universalise the phenomenon, to unnecessarily exclusive effect. For example, I have written elsewhere about how conventional content-based definitions exclude many women's utopias from the genre (L. Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (London: Routledge, 1996)). Secondly, content-based definitions tend to mis-identify the core contents of a utopia. For example, many assume that utopias are finite and perfectible and offer blueprints for the ideal polity (See J.C. Davis, op. cit., Ref. 7). Much scholarship on More's Utopia and other canonical texts suggests that they do not offer straightforward blueprints for the perfect society (see, for example, L.T. Sargent, ‘What is a utopia?’ Morus: Utopia e renascimento, 2, 2005). Utopia operates more subtly than this. It is the good place and the no place. Social arrangements in the land of Utopia are not perfect and are undermined even from within by the puns and internal jokes in the text.

19. K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge 1991 [1936]).

20. Moylan, op. cit. Ref. 7 and Moylan, op. cit., Ref. 16.

21. Levitas, op. cit. Ref. 7.

22. See, for example, M.E. Marty and R.S. Appleby (Eds), Fundamentalisms Observed: the Fundamentalism Project Vol 1. (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1991), and M.E. Marty and R.S. Appleby (Eds), Fundamentalisms Comprehended: The Fundamentalism Project Vol. 5 (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1995), M. Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and L. Caplan, Studies in Religious Fundamentalism (Albany, NY: State of New York University Press, 1987).

23. M. Percy, Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism (London: S.P.C.K., 1996).

24. G.A. Almond, E. Siran and R.S. Appleby, ‘Fundamentalism: Genus and species’, in Marty and Appleby (Eds), op. cit., Ref. 22, pp. 402–459.

25. See M.E. Marty and R.S. Appleby, The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992).

26. There are some important exceptions here. Breslov Jewish groups, for example, pay particular attention to the teachings of Rebbe Nachman in addition to the core texts of their tradition. They believe this to be the best route to traditional practices. Nachman offers what he calls a ‘new way’ to the ‘old way of our ancestors’. See http://www.breslov.org.

27. ‘The Talmud … teaches that Jews should not use human force to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the universally accepted Moshiach (Messiah from the House of David). Furthermore, it states we are forbidden to rebel against the house of nations and that we should remain loyal citizens. And we shall not attempt to leave the exile which G-d sent us into ahead of time’ (Neturei Karta: http://www.nkusa.org/aboutus, 24 June 2005).

28. Levitas, op. cit., Ref. 7.

29. S. Bruce, Fundamentalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2006).

30. Marty and Appleby op. cit., Ref. 22.

31. O. bin Laden, CNN interview, 10 May 1997, cited in P.L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (London: Phoenix, 2002) p. 21.

32. Kumar, op. cit., Ref. 14.

33. See, for example, S. McKee Charnas's trilogy, Walk to the End of the World, Motherlines, and The Furies (London: Women's Press, 1989, 1994), and J. Russ, The Female Man (London: The Women's Press, 1985).

34. She was tortured and killed by her guardians in London who claimed to believe she was possessed by the devil.

35. R.M. Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes, Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972).

36. See Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 7.

37. See D. Hardy, Utopian England: Community Experiments 1900–1945 (London: E&FN Spon, 2000) and L. Sargisson and L.T. Sargent, Living in Utopia: New Zealand's Intentional Communities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

38. L.T. Sargent, Extremism in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 327.

39. Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, ‘Who We Are’, Zarephath-Horeb: CSA Journal, 7, 1982; reproduced in Sargent, Extremism in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1995)., p. 327.

40. Sargent, Extremism in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1995)., pp. 329–330.

41. Sargent, Extremism in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1995)., p. 330.

42. Point 13, ‘What we believe’, in Sargent, Extremism in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1995)., p. 330.

43. It should be noted that some fundamentalist groups do participate in ‘pluralist’ politics, even if they believe this to be an imperfect forum. An interesting example is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This organisation is unusual because it works within (as well as outside) existing political institutions. Some 150 members of this organisation stood in the Egyptian elections of 2005 (as independent candidates). The Brotherhood was outlawed in 1954 (following the attempted assassination of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became President in 1956) and it officially renounced violence in 1970. Members stand as independent candidates because the organisation cannot legally comprise a political party, but in 2005 candidates publicly cited their allegiance to the Brotherhood (on election posters) for the first time. The group won 88 (of 444) seats and currently comprises the largest single opposition bloc in the Egyptian parliament. See http://english.aljazeera.net.

44. For discussions of the tradition of anti-utopianism, see Goodwin and Taylor, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 92–118, and G. Kateb, Utopia and its Enemies (New York: Schocken Books, 1972).

45. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987 [1790]).

46. K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

47. See, for example, R. Levinson, In Defence of Plato (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1953).

48. For more on this, see Sargisson, op. cit., Ref. 18.

49. See, for example, A.L. Morton, The English Utopia (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1952) and G.M. Logan and Robert Adams (Eds), Thomas More's Utopia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

50. See More op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 185.

51. More, op. cit., Ref. 9., p. 125.

52. More, op. cit., Ref. 9., p. 221.

53. More, op. cit., Ref. 9., p. 191.

54. Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 18.

55. John Passmore's classic text The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth, 1970) set the parameters for debate on this topic by distinguishing between different theories of human perfection. Some stem from the perfection of tasks and some are founded on an ideal of moral perfection.

56. They also anticipated surviving communist invasion and prepared for this by accumulating a large cache of arms.

57. Butler, ‘This is aryan nations’, reproduced in Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 38, p. 147.

58. Sargent, ‘This is Aryan Nations’, reproduced in Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 38., p. 147.

59. http://www.aryan-nations.org

60. http://www.aryan-nations.org

61. See D. Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2005) and B.B. Lawrence, Shattering the myth: Islam Beyond Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

62. Qur'anic approval is often cited for this: ‘Never think that those who were slain in the cause of God are dead. They are alive and well provided for by the Lord’ (The Qur'an verse 3: p. 169).

63. M. Galanter, Cults, Faith, Healing and Coercion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 105.

64. See, for example, Sargisson and Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 37.

65. E. Barker, New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction (London: HMSO, 1989), p. 81.

66. Marty and Appleby op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 39.

67. V. Geoghegan, ‘Political theory—utopia—post-secularism’, in R. Baccolini, and T. Moylan (Eds), Utopia and Method (London: Philip Allen, 2006).

68. Sargisson, op. cit., Ref. 16.

69. Sargisson and Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 37.

70. H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (London: Orion, 1998 [1905]).

71. Moylan, op. cit. Ref. 7, and Moylan, op. cit., Ref. 16.

72. See, for example, Sargent, op. cit., Ref. 7.

73. See Wells, op. cit., Ref. 70.

74. Levitas, op. cit., Ref. 7.