Beginning ~ with religious extremists

The Battle for God ~ by Karen Armstrong, 2000, religion

"One of the most startling developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety popularly known as 'fundamentalism.'  Its manifestations are sometimes shocking.  Fundamentalists have gunned down worshippers in a mosque, have killed doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics, have shot their presidents, and have even toppled a powerful government.  It is only a small minority of fundamentalists who commit such acts of terror, but even the most peaceful and law-abiding are perplexing, because they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive values of modern society.  Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state.  Christian fundamentalists reject the discoveries of biology and physics about the origins of life and insist that the Book of Genesis is scientifically sound in every detail.  At a time when many are throwing off the shackles of the past, Jewish fundamentalists observe their revealed Law more stringently than ever before, and Muslim women, repudiating the freedoms of Western women, shroud themselves in veils and chadors.  Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists both interpret the Arab-Israeli conflict, which began as defiantly secularist, in an exclusively religious way."

I think this beginning of the introduction is great.  My version from 2000 is subtitled A History of Fundamentalism, which I think is rather bland.  "Blah" is an even better term.  If you click to enlarge the cover from the UK (above), you'll see a more accurate and descriptive subtitle:  Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

I read this book about a decade ago, but apparently I bought my copy after 9-11, because it has "A New Preface" that starts like this:

"September 11, 2001, will go down in history as a day that changed the world. ... For the first time ever, the people of the United States were attacked by a foreign enemy on their own soil; not by a nation-state, and not by a nuclear missile, but by religious extremists brandishing only penknives and box cutters."

Bonus:  Is the Bible more violent than the Quran?

 
If you want to play along, this meme is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. Share the first sentence or two of the book you are reading. (Sometimes it takes several sentences to get the full thought.) Then, share your impressions of that beginning.  Click this link to see what others say about the books they are reading this week.