Scary Faith: Political Influence of Fringe Religious Groups

"In many Western societies, instances of extremism and militancy in Muslim countries are cited as evidence of Islam’s alleged incompatibility with tolerance and dissent.

There is, of course, no empirical evidence to support this contention; it also ignores the political, economic and cultural factors that have gone into this phenomenon. In fact, religious extremism, sometimes inaccurately referred to as ‘fundamentalism’, came much later to Muslim countries than to those associated with democracy and liberalism. In this context, people in two self-proclaimed stalwarts of democracy — the US and Israel — one old and the other young, continue to show a strong fascination with ‘fundamentalism’, which appears to be deepening its influence on national politics and electoral processes."

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