In the last quarter of the twentieth century, religious fundamentalisms of various stripes began a process of ascendance. In India, for instance, Hindu extremists began to gain ground in the political vacuum created by the failures of the secular nationalist Congress Party. This political opening, coupled with the ravages of liberalization, allowed the Hindu right to come to power, and consequently to push through a program of Hindutva, the Hinduization of society. In the United States, Christian fundamentalism in the form of the New Right started to impact politics in the late 1970s. Gaining momentum as a backlash against the progressive movements of the 1960s, the fundamentalists succeeded over the course of the next few decades in shifting the terms of debate on most social issues to the right. The same is true of Jewish ultranationalist and fundamentalist organizations in Israel. In short, the entry of religion into politics is not unique to countries where Islam is the dominant religion.

XREF: Connects to broader scholarly debates about the global resurgence of religious nationalism across multiple traditions, not just Islam.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 314