Religious Fundamentalism in the Middle East: A Cross-National, Inter-Faith, and Inter-Ethnic Analysis

by Mansoor Moaddel, Stuart A. Karabenick

In Religious Fundamentalism in the Middle East , Moaddel and Karabenick analyze fundamentalist beliefs and attitudes across nations (Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia), faith (Christianity and Islam), and ethnicity (Azari-Turks, Kurds, and Persians among Iranians), using comparative survey data. For them, fundamentalism is not just a set of religious beliefs. It is rather a set of beliefs about and attitudes toward whatever religious beliefs one has. In this analysis, the authors show that fundamentalist beliefs and attitudes vary across national contexts and individual characteristics, and predict people's orientation toward the same set of historical issues that were the concerns of fundamentalist intellectual leaders and activists. The authors' analysis reveals a "cycle of spirituality" that reinforces the critical importance of taking historical and cultural contexts into consideration to understand the role of religious fundamentalism in contemporary Middle Eastern societies.

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Dr. Moaddel studies culture, ideology, political conflict, revolution and social change. His work currently focuses on the causes and consequences of values and attitudes of the Middle Eastern and Islamic publics. He has carried out values surveys in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. He has also carried out youth surveys in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His previous research project analyzed the determinants of ideological production in the Islamic world. He teaches sociology of religion, ideology, revolution, Islam and the Middle East. He also teaches statistics and research methods.

(from http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/people/p...)