Fundamentalism a Dictatorship

Fundamentalism is an Intolerant Dictatorship

Fundamentalists interpret their teachings literally and that dictates how life shall be lived and what the rules of conduct are. The operative word here is 'Dictates'. When one is instructed how they shall live and it cannot be changed, this is a Dictatorship, whether its by theocratic or autocratic political authority. This makes fundamentalism anathema to democracy and completely incompatible.

The problem for fundamentalists is that they have lost the struggle for the hearts and minds of the world-wide majority. Most thinking people are adopting liberal democracy as their way of life the same as the worldwide web is adopting English as the language of global communication. Freedom of choice has won over the rule of arrogance. An analogy will clarify. The right to cross the street when it is safe has won over the unbending unquestioning traffic light.

Fundamentalism is xenophobic tribalism at its most primitive and is aggressively intolerant of the liberalism of modern times and cosmopolitan viewpoints of emerging democracies. This intolerance unfortunately leaves no options on how societies with liberal democratic views can interact in a mixed setting.

The only peaceful solution is complete and total separation geographically and culturally but they do not allow that nor is it possible anymore and so we have war or ethnic conflict as the fall back option. For example, when Pakistan was partitioned from India, it was supposed to end conflict forever. A million died during the split up and more die every day in ongoing ethnic strife.

Unless there is a clearly unequivocal reformation to tolerance in each and every fundamentalist association and complete separation of church and state worldwide in every nation, there can be no repair of this situation and the violence will continue but these desperately needed changes need to come from within led by those who love peace, tolerance and multicultural plurality more than lethal arrogance and power.  

Attaturk knew this and created that separation through the constitution in Turkey and it has led to a peaceful situation for the most part until recent liberalism allowed it to creep back into the body politic. Religious political parties need to be outlawed worldwide because they are not the innocuous harbingers of goodness they purport to be  but rather the vanguard of arrogant intolerant violent fundamentalism.

I am going to change the lens from space station binoculars to a microscope now.

These considerations hold equally well for individuals in their interpersonal relationships as they do for societies. In the family, a child who does not agree with the viewpoint of the grandparent, must have equal rights and respect if it is based on a considered opinion or clearly held belief or a different way of understanding.

So it is with a husband who must respect his wife if she is of a different opinion based on her own experience and understanding and the opposite is true as well. Love needs to be at the very least tolerant and never arrogant. This is where democracy and freedom begins, in the loving heart and in the happy home. A freely chosen belief has far greater value than that which is imposed just as a freely chosen marriage has more enduring value. This is not about merely accepting and tolerating differences. It is about joyfully celebrating them and defending them.

Jormawankenobe

© 2008 J. Jyrkkanen