NEWS ANALYSIS : THE EXTREMISTS : ASSASSINATION AFTERMATH : Global Upheaval Seen as Engine for Radical Groups

Israelis may be astonished by the notion of a Jew killing another Jew, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was ultimately the victim of a broader force that has become one of the most energetic and dangerous trends in the post-Cold War world: religious extremism.

In regions far from the Middle East, one of the starkest patterns of a decidedly secular era is the spate of violence by diverse religious groups, from obscure cults such as the Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland--48 of whose members died in mysterious fires last year--to fanatics of mainstream faiths such as Islam, Buddhism and Christianity.

“Groups that think their spiritual destinies are in jeopardy often turn to extreme means to protect themselves when they believe no one else will listen or protect the values they believe in,” said David Little of the U.S. Peace Institute, a Washington think tank.

“Because of the current global upheaval that is threatening the fundamental way of life in many parts of the world, no doubt we’ll see more of this in the future.”

Religious extremists worldwide represent tiny minorities in each society where they live, but their impact is increasingly disproportionate to their numbers. And their acts of violence are often spectacular.

The list is long and grisly: Japan’s Aum Supreme Truth cult, which adhered to Buddhist beliefs and yogic practices, orchestrated a sophisticated and deadly nerve gas attack on Tokyo’s subway earlier this year. Sikh extremists assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and blew up an Air India jumbo jet in 1985, killing 329 people. Muslim fanatics bombed Manhattan’s World Trade Center and planned a series of attacks on the United Nations and leading New York landmarks.

Religious violence is not new. The Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition are among history’s horrors. The words zealot, assassin and thug all derive from historic fanatic movements within, respectively, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.

But many contemporary factors distinguish and fuel today’s trend. The biggest one is change--especially the kind of momentous shift represented by Israel’s decision to make peace with the Arabs after half a century of war.

Because Israel is a country where nationalism and religious belief are jointly responsible for the state’s existence, it may have been particularly vulnerable to religious reactions to government policies.

Iran, the world’s only modern theocracy and a major state sponsor of international terrorism against the perceived enemies of Islam, has similar religious roots. As with Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, Iran’s extremists and surrogates believe that their actions are sanctioned, even mandated, by God.

In the current political, economic and social tumult, however, other societies are just as susceptible to the growth of politicized religious movements.

“Religion provides an ideology of stability and moral certainty in a world rapidly changing or in a world that seems unstable or corrupt,” said Mark Juergensmeyer, a UC Santa Barbara sociologist and author of “The New Cold War: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State.”

For some, religion is a refuge; for others, it is an engine for political opposition. But many activists believe the world is at a turning point that provides an opportunity to define or control aspects of the emerging new order.

Between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, the number of fundamentalist movements of all religious affiliations tripled worldwide, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Fundamentalism Project. The majority of the groups have a tendency toward violence.

The extremists are usually an offshoot or on the fringe of broader movements. And they generally believe that this is a divinely sanctioned moment in which history can be radically transformed--if they take radical action.

The worst acts of violence in Algeria’s three-year insurgency, including several bombings across the Mediterranean in France in recent months, are linked to the ruthless Armed Islamic Group, or GIA.

The group is an offshoot of an Islamic political party that ran in Algeria’s first democratic elections in 1991 as the North African state tried to shift into the post-Cold War world--a process aborted by military leaders.

Specific flash points vary widely, but the motives of diverse groups usually boil down to a few common denominators. Among them is the sense of being threatened.

The post-Cold War trend toward globalization, for example, is challenging many traditions, including religions.

To survive and avoid assimilation, extremists have struck at the systems or symbols of what they see as “the forced march toward ‘one worldism,’ ” according to Scott Appleby, a religion specialist at the University of Notre Dame.

Such attacks have been mounted by Muslim zealots who fear being absorbed by a world defined and controlled by the West, Sikh fanatics who fear losing their identity in a regional sea of Hindus and Muslims, and the paranoid and heavily armed Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Tex., which saw Uncle Sam as the enemy.

Perhaps ironically, the breakup of traditional states--spurred in part by the wave of democratization since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989--has also fueled religious extremism in the 1990s, particularly among minority groups.

The fears of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Christian Orthodox Serbs, for example, first ignited a civil war with Bosnia’s dominant Muslims and then led to horrific acts of “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims.

Rivals are literally demonized. And because the stakes are so high, drastic action can be justified.

Another threat is represented by progress at the 20th Century’s end. “Because technology has become so powerful and industrialized countries are unopposed, there is a generalized fear that together they will impose their order on all others,” Appleby said. “And then this new homogeneous society will rob them of their souls.”

This is a particular fear among religious extremists in the Third World and cults in the developed world, Appleby said.

Despite global condemnation of their actions and their ideologies, religious extremists probably are far from peaking, experts contend. As the global balance of power sorts itself out, they will be a sporadic force lashing out to keep their ideas, cultures or groups from being marginalized, excluded or forgotten.

“This is a trend that is here to stay for at least a few years,” Juergensmeyer said, “until there’s a clear pattern of political and moral leadership to replace the bipolar leadership of the Cold War.”