Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon

[jbor]

      On the other hand, Orwell did not foresee such exotic
    developments as the religious wars with which we have become
    all too familiar, involving various sorts of fundamentalism.

>> he hooks it up with anti-Semitism,
>> which might imply that
>> he's referring to the long-standing conflict in the
>> Middle East.

on 19/5/03 11:01 AM, pynchonoid at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> That leaves the US out of the mix,

I can't see where it's even remotely in the mix in the paragraph.

> where right-wing
> Christian fundamentalists shape, to a certain degree,
> policy towards Israel (Judaism, including some
> extremely conservative elements that may or may not be
> considered "fundamentalist" in some way) and its
> neighbors (Islam).

Wha? This is a load of twaddle.

> With its insistence on the present
> moment, "circa 2003" (as Pynchon repeats several
> times), the Foreword also refers to that same US
> Christian fundamentalist clique as it confronts Islam.

Where? Wasn't it "all about the oil".

The sentence we're talking about, the one which addresses "religious wars"
and "fundamentalism" (xvi), explicitly refers to "exotic developments" since
Orwell's time.
 
> Moving farther afield, the other confrontation that's
> been in the news India's right-wing Hindu
> "fundamentalism" V. Pakistan's, as the two countries
> play nuclear "chicken".

This and Khomeini were the only two I could think of, and I'm not sure that
the India/Pakistan dispute really fits into the "religious war" category
either. I don't know that Bin Laden's failed attempt to instigate pan-Arabic
Jihad deserves to be called a "war". Northern Ireland ... ? In fact, I've
got no idea what he's talking about when he refers to "the religious wars
with which we have become all too familiar, involving various sorts of
fundamentalism." It's a bizarre assertion, not well thought through at all.
I'm beginning to wonder whether Pynchon's working with the same definition
or understanding of "war" as the rest of us, or Orwell for that matter, let
alone "religious" or "fascism" or anything else!

>> If he is,
>> it's not really "fundamentalism" or a "religious
>> war" like, say, the
>> Crusades were religious wars.
> 
> I guess it was Bush, or one of his cue-card writers,
> who first referred to the War on Terror as a
> "crusade."

And who then withdrew the term again almost straight away because of the
unforeseen and potentially offensive connotations it had for Muslims.

I can barely believe how silly your argument is becoming.

best