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| | Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, Edited by R. Scott Appleby, excerpt |
 | | Politics is the organized pursuit of power, and fundamentalists seek power over, variously, the family's reproductive practices and child rearing, the school board, the seminary, the religious endowment, the denomination, the political party, the military, the government, and "outsiders," however the latter are defined. |
 | | Yet fundamentalist leaders want their followerswho include university-educated doctors, lawyers, and engineersto believe that the political message they preach is also grounded in unchanging and absolute authority and that the leader holds this authority from God. |
 | | Each of these groups of religious fundamentalists provokes outrage on the part of their coreligionists who prefer moderation in the pursuit of societal and political reform, or who do not share the exclusivist religious vision of the fundamentalists. |
| www.press.uchicago.edu /Misc/Chicago/021254.html (2481 words) |
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