Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Jbor:
>I'm not sure what, exactly, Pynchon means by "the religious wars with which
we have become all too familiar, involving various sorts of
fundamentalism".<

What's "all too familiar" for me on the religious war front is Osama bin
Laden's brand of Islam and its jihad against the Great Infidel. Second to
that
would be the President's brand Christianity. Sometimes on Sundays there's a
preacher man on TV who gives a special two-hour "sermon" on Islam; it's
offensive to
Muslim and Atheist alike. And we've all heard Jerry Fallwell call Prophet
Muhammad a "terrorist," and the President of the Southern Baptist Convention
call him a "demon-possessed pedophile," and Billy Graham's son and successor
called Islam a "very evil and wicked religion"?
But that's just what comes first to my mind. Like the fascistic paragraph,
I'm sure it can be extended to all the religious wars where the "various
sorts of fundamentalism" are at work--Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel,
Palestine, you name it.


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2003 5:19 PM
Subject: Re: Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon


> on 17/5/03 10:54 PM, Toby G Levy wrote:
>
> > And this set me to thinking, where is the evidence of religious
> > fundamentalism in the works of Pynchon?
>
> Puritans and Protestants in _GR_. The dodo-hunting Dutch. Quakers and
> Jesuits (at least) in _M&D_. The Dutch at the Cape again. Not much about
> Islam, though there are bits in _V._
>
> I'm not sure what, exactly, Pynchon means by "the religious wars with
which
> we have become all too familiar, involving various sorts of
fundamentalism".
>
> Ayatollah Khomeini? Pakistan v. India?
>
> best
>