ISIS and capitalism

It is always a pleasure to hear Paul Morris, Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University, Wellington. He ranges across his wide learning and treats his audience with more respect than it often deserves, assuming that they can follow the many references he throws around. Last week he talked about religious fundamentalism in his talk to Kia Ora Torah. He traced the history of the term 'fundamentalism' from its eighteenth century origin to the present day, a term that at times had positive connotation, uncompromising, honest beliefs, at times very negative connotation, chopping people's heads off. It was a clever, academic exercise, amusing if not very helpful for understanding the phenomenon that plagues our contemporary world. It did not address the differences between people with genuinely held personal beliefs and those who would impose narrowly defined strict beliefs and practices on others with no room for toleration for any who do not subscribe to such beliefs. He made no distinction between believing Jews, Muslims or Christians, your average Kosovar or Albanian or Fijian Indian Muslim, and followers of ISIS, or the average worshippers in a synagogue in Wellington, London or New York and those for whom the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein is a hero. He saw the appeal of ISIS, its fundamentalism, to some Western young people as a response to soulless materialism that underlies capitalism. I could identify with this, in my callow youth I believed in socialism as a way to a more just, compassionate, peaceful world, and I, and some of the people I associated with sneered at the young people who studied accountancy, business, as roads to riches. We had enough and wanting more seemed unjust. The question Paul did not address is how religious fundamentalism, and particularly Islamic fundamentalism replaced Communism as the great enemy of the West. George Orwell was the one who foresaw this in 1949, in his novel 1984.