After thousands of years of civilizational progress, an ancient yet ever-renewing virus still dominates human minds — a virus called fanaticism, whether ethnic or religious.
Despite humanity’s journey from caves to space, despite building civilizations and launching scientific and technological revolutions, we find ourselves still prisoners of this old, mutating virus — using modern tools of military might, oppressive authority, and the absence of a collective moral conscience.
It is not a biological virus like the plague or COVID-19 — but a far deadlier epidemic: the epidemic of fanaticism.
A Multifaceted Epidemic
This virus disguises itself under many banners, but its essence is one:
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In America, it manifests in leaders who exploit evangelical Christian fundamentalism to inflame division.
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In Israel, it appears in the form of Netanyahu’s Zionism — justifying exclusion and domination.
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In the Arab world, it takes the shape of extremist Sunni fundamentalism, confining religion to eternal jihad with a weapon of intellectual narrowness and dogmatism.
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In Iran, it emerges through clerics who turn faith into a political tool of control.
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In Afghanistan, it shows its ugliest face in the oppression of women and the denial of social freedom in the name of religion.
Despite differing slogans, the root is the same: a supremacist urge that views itself as the absolute truth — and sees the other as an enemy to be crushed, excluded, or imprisoned.
Symptoms of the Disease
Like biological epidemics, this one has clear symptoms:
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Dividing people into “us” and “them.”
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Justifying violence and killing in the name of the sacred.
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Reviving the past to freeze the present and murder the future.
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Suppressing reason and silencing criticism.
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Manufacturing fear and hatred to consolidate power.
More Dangerous Than Physical Epidemics
Humanity has faced the plague, the Spanish flu, and COVID-19 — and survived them all through science. But the epidemic of fanaticism attacks collective consciousness itself — spawning civil wars, global terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and political tyranny.
It drags humanity back to the caves — even as it reaches outer space.
The Cure and the Vaccine
There is no vaccine for this virus except reason — no cure except justice, rationality, and the freedom of thought and self-criticism.
The remedy lies in education — in teaching new generations that diversity is wealth, not a curse. It lies in justice, by eliminating class inequality that fuels hatred.
It lies in building bridges instead of walls, and reviving the humanity of man before any creed.
The gravest threat we face today is not poverty or climate change alone, but this ideological virus — hiding behind the masks of religion and nationalism, yet waging war on both reason and compassion.
History teaches us that epidemics pass — and that the mind can always invent vaccines. But survival depends on realizing that humanity is one body, and any cell infected with fanaticism can spread disease to the whole.
Let us awaken, then — before this virus becomes the guillotine that severs the arteries of the future.
Returning to the Core: Political Systems and the Silence of the Elite
At the root of this crisis lie political structures, the monopoly of power, and the silence of intellectual elites in societies.
We must think deeply about how to escape this human predicament.
Fanaticism at the United Nations
The speech by U.S. President Donald Trump before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025 was a vivid manifestation of this epidemic.
He attacked the UN itself, belittled international cooperation, and called for nations to close their borders and expel strangers — a perfect embodiment of fanaticism’s core: dividing the world into us and them.
Trump did not openly call for dismantling the UN — but he did something far worse: undermining it from within, weakening its purpose and draining its strength, just as a virus weakens a body’s immunity before leaving it helpless.
This speech was not an isolated incident, but a warning bell — proof that the epidemic has reached the heart of the international institution itself.
If the world surrenders to this infection, the global order will collapse into a law of power and division. But if humanity recognizes its danger, it can produce a new intellectual vaccine — based on rationality, justice, and genuine pluralism.
