Zenith

This chapter explores how the concept of fundamentalism was reinvented; it was made far less specific and far more elastic and was transformed into a category that was broad enough to accommodate movements that could be found in many different religious traditions. Increasingly, fundamentalism was thought of as a global phenomenon rather than one that was limited to North American Protestantism. The chapter cites Bernard Lewis' 1990 article, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” a text that encapsulates the arguments of a thinker who played an important role in shaping how Americans thought about Islamic fundamentalism. It also explores two important scholarly articles that reveal some of the ways scholars used global fundamentalism during and after the era when the scholarly study of global fundamentalism was at its zenith.