Introduction

The recent movie American Dreamz is a satire of American society and the Bush administration, but its sub-text strongly reenforces hegemonic ideas. A Muslim fundamentalist is sent from his training camp to Southern California. He stays with his uncle and auntie while waiting for further orders from his terrorist cell. Although this character lost his mother in an American attack in the Middle East, he has nevertheless always loved American popular culture, and especially Hollywood musicals. He hides this from his Muslim ‘brothers’, and is secretly happy to move to the ‘Mecca’ of movies. Initially he is critical of consumer culture and wonders why his cousins need to go to the mall more than once a week, but he gradually embraces the American way of life. Through sheer luck, he is selected to take part in a talent quest similar to American Idol, which the President of the United States is expected to attend in its last episode. The terrorist is ordered to take this as an opportunity to blow himself up and kill the President, but at the end, he decides otherwise because he has become fully entrenched in his new western life.

One interpretation of this movie is that however critical a non-American Muslim fundamentalist might be towards the American way of life, he can become moderate if he leads a life bombarded with popular and consumer culture. This view, however, opposes the many studies on religious fundamentalism that have found this phenomenon to be a reaction to the excesses of western consumer society. The previous three chapters in this book have focused on new religious phenomena that have embraced their immersion in postmodernity. They have adapted to it, and to some extent are even carriers of, these changes in western societies. This chapter deals with religious fundamentalist groups which are partly reactive to these changes. These groups are far from being pre-modern in their nature as they are specific reactions to some of today’s social and cultural changes.