The Clash of Fundamentalisms

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Tue Apr 30 11:17:33 PDT 2002


At 01:18 PM 04/30/2002 -0400, Luke wrote:
>What would a materialist analysis look like, in this case? If it were to be
>plausible, it would have to account for the vast psychic comfort of a)
>believing in God and b) believing yourself to be (infallibly) in the right.

A little more than this: a materialist analysis would include the fact that for the countries attempting to recover from the depradations of colonialism there were the following alternatives: 1) continuing subservience 2) a socialist-based independence 3) a fundamentalist-based "independence ".

The rejection of the colonial masters implies a rejection of the first option. However, during this process many of the supporters of option 2 were killed, exiled, tortured, imprisoned, or otherwise eliminated. This leaves option 3, which does receive support from the west, as in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Afghanistan, Kuwait etc. I suppose the absolute classic case of this would be Iran....or Indonesia. So we are left with fundamentalist regimes which rehearse the rituals of patriarchy for domestic consumption....while materially continuing to serve colonial interests.

Joanna



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