20 North Africa & the Middle East: Cultural Geography II –
Religious Fundamentalism

Over the last fifty years, one of the most divisive cultural trends in many parts of the world has been the rise of religious fundamentalism, and in few places has the issue been more pressing than in North Africa and the Middle East.

Religious fundamentalism is not unique this region, or to Islam. Other prominent examples include Christian fundamentalism in the United States, Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, Hindu fundamentalism in India, and Buddhist fundamentalism in Myanmar, to name just a few. Practically every religion includes at least some fundamentalist believers, and religious fundamentalists are present in practically every country.

Textual Literalism

In the strictest sense, religious fundamentalism is defined as a literal interpretation of holy texts. Not all people of faith assume their holy books are strictly fact-based. Many Christians, for example, view some Biblical stories as parables that illustrate important truths, but not as a strict accounting of facts. For Christian fundamentalists, however, every single word of the Bible is a factual and infallible statement. God created the world in six days, Jonah spent three days in the belly of whale, and Methuselah lived for nearly a thousand years. Muslim fundamentalists feel the same way about the Quran, as do Jewish fundamentalists about the Torah.

In this sense, religious fundamentalism has been around as long as religious texts themselves. For centuries, most people of faith had no reason to believe their holy books weren’t based on immutable facts. Over the last several decades, however, religious fundamentalism has assumed a broader meaning attached to cultural change and conflict.

Cultural Values in Traditional Rural Societies

In Chapter 8, we examined the demographic transition as it related to population growth. It is a transition from a period of high birth rates and high death rates, through a population explosion, to a period of low birth rates and low death rates. It is also a significant cultural transition, from rural to urban, and from traditional to modern. As societies make this transition, cultural values change. Attitudes toward religion, women, marriage, family, and sexuality shift, and religious fundamentalism is often a backlash against those cultural changes.

Consider the cultural values common to traditional rural societies, beginning with the role of women. In these societies, women get married at a very young age and raise many children. The notion that “a woman’s place is in the home” – an idea usually considered abhorrent in modern societies – was generally accepted as fact in traditional societies. Two hundred years ago, the average woman had eight children, and many women had far more children than that. A woman raising eight children without the benefit of modern technology was “in the home” because she had little time to be anyplace else. Women were in charge of the domestic sphere, caring for their homes, husbands, and children. Men were in charge of the public sphere, controlling such pursuits as politics, science, education, and business. Women were largely denied roles in such activities, because it meant they were ignoring their domestic duties.

There were other key values in traditional societies. Family and religion were the central institutions in society. People primarily interacted with their spouses, parents, children, siblings, and members of their extended family. Because religious services were one of the few distractions from the grind of preindustrial rural life, a person’s non-family interactions were usually with members of their religious community. Children were rarely exposed to ideas that did not originate from their parents or religion, and therefore had little reason to question the cultural traditions of their community. Traditional societies also typically had very conservative ideas about sex. Because large, stable families were economically and culturally desirable, divorce was almost unheard of, and sex was viewed primarily as means toward reproduction. Premarital and extramarital sex, particularly for women, was strictly forbidden, as was homosexuality.

Cultural Changes in Modern Urban Societies

Modern societies have not, of course, completely erased all of these traditional values. Family and religion remain profoundly important to many people in modern societies. That said, the demographic transition has eroded some of the primary tenants of traditional, rural culture.

To begin, religion frequently becomes less central to daily life in modern societies. Secular education coexists with religious education, and often replaces it. Modern urban societies have far more outlets for socialization and entertainment than traditional rural ones, so people seek diversions outside of religious services and festivals. It is not a coincidence that western Europe, the first place to become predominantly urban, was also the first place to see regular participation in religious activities decline significantly.

In modern societies, the role of women shifts dramatically. Women generally get married later, become mothers later, and have fewer children, if they get married and have children at all. As a result, women begin to demand and receive opportunities and responsibilities outside of the home – they receive a better education and become more involved in public activities, such politics and business. Divorce rates increase, not because of an increase in unhappy marriages, but because marriage is no longer an absolute economic necessity for many women.

The attitudes of young people change as well. No longer interacting strictly with members of their own family and religious community, they are exposed to different cultures through education and socialization, as well as through books, movies, television, and other forms of media. As a result, they become more likely to embrace new ideas and question the conventions of their elders. The United States, for example, first became a predominantly urban society in the 1920s. Not coincidentally, that was the same decade that the United States first began to develop a truly distinct “youth culture.”

Sexual values also shift dramatically. Because people in modern societies get married at a later age – often well more than a decade after puberty – the likelihood of premarital sex increases, along with the likelihood of having multiple sexual partners before marriage. Sex is then culturally “decoupled” from marriage and reproduction, and sexuality is more freely discussed. Over time, sexual and gender identities once considered forbidden become acceptable.

For many religious fundamentalists, some or all of these changes are unwelcome. The increased freedom and social prominence of women, declining religious activity and familial interaction, an increased divorce rate, the defiance of young people, and a greater openness about sexuality are frequently cited by religious fundamentalists as signs that society is in a state of moral decay. Many religious fundamentalists long for an idealized past when traditional rural values were the norm. It is not a coincidence that, in nearly every single country on earth, religious fundamentalism is more prominent in rural areas than in urban ones, because rural areas are more closely linked to traditional lifestyles.

Religious Nationalism

Many religious fundamentalists do not believe it is their right or duty to impose their beliefs on others. Many other religious fundamentalists, however, believe that the very survival of their national culture depends on adherence to traditional religious values. The idea that certain religious values underpin national identity is known as religious nationalism.

Religious nationalists feel that not only are religious beliefs a litmus test for national identity, but also that their particular values should be enforced on the whole of society by legal means. Around the world, religious nationalists have successfully lobbied for laws and policies that counteract (or that they believe counteract) some of the cultural shifts associated with the modern world. In some countries, homosexuality has been criminalized, controversial books and other media have been banned, curriculums have been scrutinized for messages that “corrupt” school children, and restrictions have been placed on personal freedoms of women. In the most extreme cases, the line between religion and government is erased completely, often through violent revolution. 

Militant Fundamentalism in North Africa and the Middle East

Militant fundamentalism is the use of violence to promote religious nationalist ideals. As noted above, not all people of faith are fundamentalists, and not all fundamentalists are religious nationalists. Likewise, not all religious nationalists embrace militancy. The vast majority of the world’s religious faithful – fundamentalist or not – are appalled by the use of violence to enforce religious beliefs. In the United States, for example, many Christian fundamentalists have long been opposed to abortion, but only a tiny fraction of them consider violence against abortion providers to be an acceptable act. Likewise, the vast majority of Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East see violence as an anathema to their faith.

That said, no other region on earth has seen more conflict associated militant fundamentalism than North Africa and the Middle East. Two of the world’s most notorious fundamentalist terrorist organizations – al Qaeda and the Islamic State – originated there, and few countries in the region have escaped violence associated with such religious militancy. There are four primary reasons for this. First, the region is just now becoming a predominantly urban region, a time when such cultural conflicts are mostly likely to erupt. Second, decades of European colonization and American military intervention have created a deep-seated resentment toward the West. The U.S. and Europe went through the demographic transition earlier, and therefore embraced modern ideas earlier. As a result, Islamic fundamentalists have successfully labeled modernism as a poisonous Western influence that must be combatted at all costs. Third, North Africa and the Middle East is the world’s least democratic region, and militancy is often viewed as the only avenue for promoting the fundamentalist agenda. Finally, a disproportionately large percentage of recruits to terrorist organizations are frustrated young men and, due to high unemployment and political disenfranchisement, North Africa and the Middle East certainly has no shortage of them. Refugee camps in particular have proven to be one of the most fertile recruiting grounds for militant fundamentalist groups.

Cited and additional bibliography:

Freeze, Jacob. Flag_of_al-Qaeda. photo, 6 Aug. 2010. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/37773726@N08/4865701950/. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).

Wibisono, Susilo, et al. “A Multidimensional Analysis of Religious Extremism.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019. Frontiers, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02560.