This past week saw the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American diplomats in Libya, while a fresh wave of riots and attacks on American embassies and schools took place throughout the Islamic world, from North Africa to South Asia. Clearly, the so-called Arab Spring is in disarray as intolerance rises rapidly throughout the region. These unnerving events should have come as no surprise. The dangers of fundamentalism were detailed in 1995, when religious scholars Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby completed their extensive eight-year Fundamentalism Project for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which charted the rise of conservative religious movements around the world.
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