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0УДК 329.3 Toktobek kyzy I., Koshoeva Ch.M.
Toktobek kyzy I.
2nd year master's student International University of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
Научный руководитель: Koshoeva Ch.M.
Ph.D., associate Professor International University of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM, RELIGIOUS POLITICAL EXTREMISM AND RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: GENERAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL
Аннотация: the study offers an approach to the definition of the concepts of «religious extremism», «religious and political extremism», «religious fundamentalism», and the relationship between them. The author attempts to identify their general, special and individual features, focusing on the heterogeneity of the elements of these classes.
Ключевые слова: religious extremism, political extremism, fundamentalism, types of extremism.
One of the threats to the modern development of mankind is religious extremism, the counteraction of which requires a consistent scientific theory. Its construction largely depends on the categorical elaboration of basic concepts, in particular such as "religious extremism", "religious and political extremism" and "religious fundamentalism", the ratio of which, their common and differing features have not yet been the subject of special scientific analysis.
This work is aimed at changing this state of affairs and attempts to present a
new approach to solving the identified scientific problem, to establish the relationship between the concepts of "religious extremism", "religious and political extremism" and "religious fundamentalism", revealing their coinciding characteristics, demonstrating the heterogeneity of the elements of the volumes of these classes.
The first known use of the term "religious extremism" is the article "Brewers of Ohio" in the newspaper "St. Paul Daily Globe" (Minnesota) dated May 16, 1883, which described a meeting of brewers protesting against the position of some representatives of the local clergy, who accused alcohol producers of immorality and a step away from the truths of Christianity [26, p. 2]. For several years, the term has been used, initially in US journalism, to describe a very wide range of phenomena: from speeches for sobriety justified by religious rhetoric to suicides in a state of religious frenzy. And in the early years of the twentieth century, when the concept of "religious extremism" began to include phenomena with a specifically political character (in particular, the ideology and activities of radical groups of the Indian national liberation movement, whose religious beliefs and lifestyle did not fundamentally differ from the positions of the majority of Hindus), no further terminological clarifications were carried out. As a result, and to this day in the literature, "religious extremism" is often understood as very different phenomena from each other, the essential diversity of which is not fully reflected. For example, through one category of "religious extremism", both politically passive, escapist Christian denominations [2] and such active groups as the Muslim Brotherhood or Ulster ultras were described [3, p. 499].
The internal heterogeneity of the elements of the scope of the concept of "religious extremism" with insufficient elaboration of the issues of classification of its types to a certain extent was a factor in the development of discussion regarding the content of this category of political analysis. Currently, we can talk about the coexistence in Russian science of several approaches to understanding the essence of religious extremism, focusing on the following characteristics:
- the use of violence [see: 10];
- carrying out illegal activities aimed at scrapping the existing political
regime [6; 16; 18];
- propaganda of intolerance and the practice of implementing such beliefs in political life [4];
- essential antidemocratism, antipluralism, denial of human rights and freedoms [13], which is the dominant concept in Western social science [21, pp. 106108].
In some studies, these approaches are opposed to each other, attempts are made to justify the exceptional importance of only one of these features. However, most of the authors try to synthesize them to one degree or another, which is why the attribution of a particular work to one type or another is largely conditional.
In an attempt to distinguish between political and non-political elements of the scope of the concept of "religious extremism", researchers began to use the term "religious and political extremism", first used by N. P. Andrianov in 1981 [1, p. 6] and won recognition of scientific community at the beginning of the XXI century. Doctor of Philosophy, Professor A. A., who played a significant role in the development of the concept. Nurullaev wrote: "The pursuit of political goals makes it possible to distinguish religious and political extremism from religious extremism, which is mainly manifested in the sphere of religion and does not set such goals for itself" [11, p. 84].
Despite serious arguments, this approach has not yet become dominant in science, and both the widespread use of the term "religious extremism" in relation to organizations and doctrines with political characteristics and the attempts to introduce new terms, the validity of which raises serious doubts (for example, "extremism in religion" [14, p. 28]).
Theoretical disagreements could not provide a deep study of the content of the concept of "religious and political extremism". At the same time, the main place of research recognizing such a division is to point out the fact that the signs of this phenomenon are the denial of dissent, the low level of tolerance, the emphasis on the socio-normative content of religion, as well as the denial of compromise ways to overcome political contradictions, based on references to religious dogmas [12, p.
125; 17, p. 22-23; 7, p. 98; 15, p. 59; 19, p. 108-109].
In addition to the above, among the signs of religious and political extremism can be named a number of signs identified by Professor of Political Sciences at Bar-Ilan University C. S. Liebman (Israel):
1) the desire to expand the scope of application of religious law, including both public and private life of citizens in the sphere of its regulation; at the same time, the specification of these norms in their strict interpretation is prescribed. "The term "strict" does not mean closer to the "letter of the law"... "Strict" implies the introduction of large restrictions and inconveniences, which are welcomed by extremists" [24, pp. 76-78];
2) social isolation from other groups that do not accept extremist norms;
3) the denial of cultural forms and values that are not perceived as indigenous to religious tradition.
Developing the idea of the existence of a political variety of religious extremism, Russian researcher M. I. Efremov suggests that within the framework of religious extremism, its religious and psychological type should also be distinguished, referring to the latter ideas and organizations that do not pursue political goals [8, p. 26]. The sect is given as an example
The "Mountain Jerusalem", whose followers in November 2007 went to a shelter they had built underground to pray in anticipation of the "end of the world", without making any demands.
The identification of a non-political variety of religious extremism is combined with the results of studying a number of apocalyptic cults, the expectation of the "end of the world" for which made political activity meaningless. Professor of the Department of Sociology at the University of California, D. R. Hull writes that neither Jim Jones (the leader of the Temple of Peoples) nor David Koresh (the Branch of David) tried to create a "paradise on earth", but large-scale acts of violence that marked the termination of the activities of these groups (meaning the collective suicide of members of the Temple of Peoples in 1978, 909 people were killed, including 270 children, and the siege by law enforcement forces of the Mount Carmel
estate in Texas, during which in 1993 79 members of the "Branch of David" and at least 4 law enforcement officers died), were the result not of the internal logic of their development, but of the external intervention of "opponents who, willingly or unwillingly, contributed to the formation and implementation of the emerging apocalyptic vision of the sect" [23, p. 44].
The consideration of "religious extremism" raises the question of its relation to such a category worked out in science as "religious fundamentalism", which also has almost a century-old history.
By "religious fundamentalism", the Russian religious scholar A. I. Kirlezhev suggests understanding a stable religious attitude or one of the types of modern religious consciousness characterized by:
- negative attitude towards secularization, calls for the restoration of tradition in the form of the dominance of religion in the life of society, the establishment of religious ideology using the means of modern civilization;
- an attempt to interpret religion in terms of power over a person both spiritually and politically;
- appealing to the absolute authority of religious texts, assuming the possibility of their unambiguous understanding and denying the hermeneutical approach, which leads to antipluralism, expressed in the requirement to accept one's own interpretation as the only true one;
- denial of historical development, which explains the heightened apocalyptic expectations of fundamentalists, who in this situation tend to consider themselves as a kind of "God-chosen" group [9, pp. 280-281]. Curator of the international project "Fundamentalism" of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, President of the largest association of religious scholars - the American Academy of Religion, M. I. Marty, among the signs of religious
fundamentalism, additionally includes the following:
- "fundamentalism occurs on the basis of traditional culture, or a culture in which people perceive and claim that they simply and conservatively inherit a worldview and lifestyle... Newly created zealous religious groups (sometimes also
called "cults"...) are not fundamentalist, even if socially they bear some features of fundamentalist movements" [25, p. 18];
- reaction, counteraction, revanchist actions. "If there are none, observers continue to refer to such movements or simply cultures as "traditional" or "conservative"" [ibid., p. 9];
- worshiping the past, fundamentalists are "selective in what from the past should be considered and approved as the basis";
- potential or actual aggressiveness, which does not allow us to consider escapist traditionalist denominations (for example, Amish or Doukhobors) as fundamentalist [ibid., 22].
Based on the above, it can be argued that the concepts of "religious-political extremism" and "religious fundamentalism" are compatible and intersect (see Fig. and Table).
On the one hand, extremist groups that arose on the basis of new religious movements (for example, in the United States - ATWA, created by followers of Charles Mills Manson, or the white supremacist movement "Church of the Creator" [22, p. 65]), on the other - fundamentalist movements remain outside the scope of compatibility of these categories whose potential anti-pluralism does not reach critical levels, does not manifest itself in a complete denial of democracy and justification of violence against dissidents.
Ai
A:
Bi
B2
The relationship between the concepts of "religious extremism" (A), "religious and political extremism" (C) and "religious fundamentalism" (C)
Examples of organizations and movements related to religious extremism, religious and political extremism and religious fundamentalism
Plenty Type of organization Name Region
А1 Religious extremist, non-political and fundamentalist "Heaven's Gate" USA
"Branch of David" USA
А2 Religious extremist fundamentalist, non-political "Disciples of Christ" USA
"Church of God" USA
"Temple of the Peoples" Haiti
В1 Religious and political extremists who are fundamentalist "Lord's Army Uganda
of Resistance" Indonesia
"Abu Sayyaf"" Egypt
В2 Religious and political extremists who are not fundamentalist "Al-Jihad" Japan
Aum Shinrikyo USA
ATWA USA
С1 Fundamentalist, nonextremist "Church of the Creator" USA
"Christian Right" India
Bharatiya Janata Party Israel
The identification of fundamentalist organizations that cannot be classified as extremism is confirmed in the research of L. Ozzano, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Turin (Italy), who, based on an analysis of the activities of fundamentalists under democratic rule, concluded that, unable to achieve an absolute majority in elections, fundamentalists are forced to They should join inter-party coalitions and, consequently, become more pragmatic and moderate [27, pp. 145-146].
Without denying the opinion of M. I. Marti, who excluded new religions from the elements of the "fundamentalism" class, but starting from the ideas of followers-
According to the Weber-Trelch "church-sect" typology, based on the idea of the existence of a continuum within which religion evolves from sect to denomination and church [5], we consider it possible to raise the issue of fundamentalism of groups characterized by extremism in matters of personal behavior of followers, justification of violence against dissenters, primarily within the group, the lack of explicit political demands, self-exclusion from political struggle and at the same time widespread appeal to a certain "religious heritage", despair-which coincides with the dogmas of the major denominations. Such movements, in our opinion, being types of religious non-political extremism (in the terminology of M. I. Efremov - religious and psychological extremism), can also be called fundamentalist. At first glance, separate groups within such organizations of the restorationist trend of Christianity as the "Disciples of Christ" and the "Church of God" can be attributed to such a variety.
Further elaboration of the issues of distinguishing the types of religious extremism and their typology is intended not only to contribute to the deepening of the theoretical analysis of the problems of extremism, but also to provide new guidelines for anti-extremist measures of state policy, the key to the success of which, not least, is the selection of both general and specific measures for each of the varieties of religious extremism counteraction with the proper implementation of the constitutional freedom of conscience and religion.
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