ABSTRACT
Political actors, and many states, face a growing problem of handling religious issues because they are confronted with new paradigms: those religions which are successful on the "global market" are disconnected with traditional cultures and specific territories. They are both a product and a tool of globalization, and not the expression of existing political forces. Fundamentalism is the religious form that is most suited to globalization, because it accepts its own deculturation and makes it the instrument of its claim to universality. Religion is seen either as a part of an ethno-national culture or as a supra national factor that could threaten existing nation-states. It is the relationship between religion and the public sphere that is changing, for religious revival in the public sphere no longer takes on the form of cultural visibility but has become a display of religious "purity" or of reconstructed traditions.
