Fundamentalism and Terrorism

Abstract

Under what circumstances and with what rationale do people kill and maim one another and, in particular, innocent people and children, in the name of a higher cause? This occurred in Oklahoma City, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, former Yugoslavia and, of course, New York and Washington. Indeed, we are faced with the prospect of a horrifying stand-off between two sorts of projecting and reprojecting fundamentalists in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and the politics of the Trump regime. We need constructive guilt and reparation, not self-righteousness and retaliation. At the moment I see two sets of projections, mutual caricatures, mutual incomprehension and underlying fundamentalisms on both sides. Where is the capacity for concern, the ability to see things in mixed, pluralistic, tolerant terms? If we cannot transcend the brittle stances I have been describing, we cannot have a liveable world.