America

About the author: America is a weekly magazine that was founded by Jesuits in 1909.

Fundamentalism is not a uniquely Islamic phenomenon. All religions have evinced some form of fundamentalism, as evidenced by the Christian Crusades in the Middle Ages to modern atrocities against Muslims committed by Jews in Israel. Fundamentalism in any religion is a natural response to modernity. Moreover, other religions have only recently ended their violent and puritanical reactions to a changing world. Hopefully, the positive transformation of other religions will influence Muslims to accept the value of religious freedom and individuality.

We sometimes imagine that the besieged and occasionally violent form of religiosity known as fundamentalism is a uniquely Islamic trait. This is not the case. As novelist and former nun Karen Armstrong has written, "fundamentalism is a global fact and has surfaced in...