Identity Mania: Fundamentalism and the Politicization of Cultural Differences

How do culturally determined political conflicts arise? Thomas Meyer suggests that most religions share core values, and difference only leads to intolerance and violence when politically ambitious leaderships exploit it. Hence the essentially political phenomenon of fundamentalism, which occurs in all civilizations, he argues, when triggered by social crisis. In the age of globalization, social crisis grows out of an exclusionary dynamic that maginalizes growing numbers of people. Deepening inequality between North and South has undermined popular confidence in secular leaders' vision of development and triggered a divisive fundamentalism that declares war on modernism and traditionalism alike. Political strategies to defeat fundamentalism and the identity mania that accompanies it need economic and social structures that do not exclude or make people insecure, but give citizens a common interest in a socially responsible market economy, which delivers to all.