It is often said that religion is the birthplace of fundamentalism.
This is true only if we limit our idea of religion to a set of fixed rituals and narrow dogmas, especially when we believe that our conception of God, our Scripture, our way of life is the only true way. It is this exclusivity that makes a fertile breeding ground for fundamentalism.
But this exclusivity is not the sole property of religions. A scientist vehemently denying God even without taking a serious quest, an ideologue believing his ideology to be the only one that can save mankind and the world, are equally prone to fundamentalism. It may not translate into violent actions that seek to eliminate the ‘non-believers’ but oppose them with loud voices trying to stifle what it does not believe in.
It is therefore not religion but narrowness and an intellectual shallowness, an inability to deeper into the very heart of things, an incapacity to search for higher and higher truths, an intolerance of all that has a different way of life and conception of Reality is the birthplace of fundamentalism.
But Religion, Science, Idealism all have a positive side in their search for a better state and condition of human living. If their different approaches can fuse in a common aspiration, then we may discover something of THAT Reality which exceeds both Science and Religion, is beyond ideas and idealism and yet is the secret Source of all.
