Religion, intolerance, and social identity

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades the secular world has witnessed an increasing assault, specifically from the monotheistic religious fundamentalist community, on their beliefs and values. The undeniable intolerance shown by the religious fundamentalist community has often translated into violent terrorist attacks against the secular world. The fact that religious beings can resort to such atrocious acts of violence has certainly baffled many onlookers. It surely comes as no surprise that religious fundamentalism is generally viewed as a ''hard-to-understand‟ phenomenon. This literature review will describe the ''hard-to-understand‟ phenomenon that is religious fundamentalism by employing social identity theory.The social identity of religious fundamentalists is generally derived from sacred texts and what they consider to be absolute truths. These presumed absolute truths not only provide ample opportunity for the development of the ''us‟/''them‟ duality, but also provide a platform for an intense intolerance of the ''other‟, also referred to as the out-group. Of course, the ''us‟/''them‟ duality can be created on many social dimensions, but religion has proven to bring quite an extensive, even murderous, intolerance to in- and out-group characterizations. The ever increasing actions of religious fundamentalist groups over the past few decades have certainly illustrated this point with some conviction.The importance of social identity has been recognised in many major traditions of the social sciences, not excluding political science. Social identity forms the basis of any group‟s actions or reactions. Therefore, its significance stretches far beyond simply providing an identity to a social group. Social identity also acts as a preamble to how a social group, in this case religious fundamentalists, chooses to deal with invidious comparisons. By employing social identity in this particular way we can go beyond investigating how religious fundamentalists act and react to the point of understanding why they act and react the way they do. In this study it was found that although a number of options to deal with invidious comparisons are available to social groups, only a few of these options are likely to be pursued by religious fundamentalists in order to remain arelevant and competitive social group within the social hierarchy. This approach will provide important insights into a formerly ''hard-to-understand‟ phenomenon namely religious fundamentalism.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University