ABSTRACT
The fundamentalist change that has taken place in Islam in recent decades has been widely explored in research. However, the decisive question, what kind of change does fundamentalism cause in the organization of affects, and what effects it causes for culture, is not yet asked. The present contribution starts with the observation that the emotional state in Muslim milieus is increasingly dominated by an extreme sensitivity toward ‘seduction’. The former, rather serene approach to the difference between religious norms and practice gives way to a paranoid prosecution of the deviation from norms, which triggers a totalitarian logic that does not seem to stop anywhere. Constant irritation and affective outbursts, including violent excesses, as they have been observed for some time, dominate the manifestation of the Islamist subject, whose condition is expressed primarily in resentment. Based on the distinction, pragmatic vs. fundamentalist, which refers to two forms of attitude to the world, an analysis concept is presented, which correlates the affects and conduct of life and provides impulses to a cultural analysis that escapes the pitfalls of culturalism. In that context, Max Weber’s view of Islam has to be revisited and partially modified. The certainty of salvation attested by him, in particular, to the early Islam of the aristocrat warriors, cannot explain the cultural attitude of the present carriers of fundamentalist movement, which rather expresses itself in paranoid zeal, to secure the salvation in this world. This attempt, however, misses always its goal and the emotional irritation increases. In this connection, the differences between fundamentalist Islam and ascetic puritanism, which often were considered as similar, are finally highlighted.
