New Faces of Religious Fundamentalism and Violence

Abstract

In principle, all religions stand for peace, harmony and love. However, in practice, religion has also led to a lot of violence and bloodshed. For all religions, God is love. But it is not rare that in the name of God who is love, hatred and violence are advocated. Perhaps no religion is an exception to this. Religious fundamentalism and intolerance and violence springing from fundamentalist approaches to religion are not new. But, the rise of religious fundamentalism today raises many interesting questions. On the one hand, we speak about a post-religious secularized world; on the other hand we find that religion has come again to the central stage even in the secularized world, but in the negative form of fundamentalism. The unholy relationship of religion with politics, money, power, etc. has made fundamentalism a difficult mixture. Though this combination is not new, the extensiveness and profundity of these relations have made religious fundamentalism today very complex and complicated. Moreover, the global connectedness facilitated by globalization and the use of the Internet and other new generation media have led to a globalization of religious fundamentalism and violence, threatening global peace, and the very existence of humanity.