Religious Fundamentalism and the Globalization of Intolerance

Abstract

After the fall of communism, there emerged the idea that ideology was extinguished, and that ideological conflict has been reduced to silence. The increasing importance of the new “spiritual rebirth” movements raises the question of the global phenomenon of the resurrection of ideologies on a religious basis. The experience of secularization involves a secularization of identity. We have chosen as an example the case of Marxism, with its attempt at a reconstruction of identity with the help of the “disenchanting” of religion and the theorizing of the praxis. As a consequence of the crisis caused by the secularization of identity, today we are facing new religious movements. These are no longer important from the point of view of their tradition or past, but rather are important as religious ideologies that announce the possibility of the emergence of an ideological global conflict.