Do you buy the idea that fundamentalism can be coupled with technological advancement

It can be coupled with "lone genius" types of advancement but not with more systematic ones. Probably they are unable to stand on the lone genius's shoulders, fundamentalism requires you either worship him and do not dare to revise and improve his work, or to ignore/hate. This is because these lines of thought are very strongly focused on authority, focusing more on who says it not what is said. So if a lonely genius impresses them sufficiently they will either worship him and his work and never dare to improve on it, or ignore/hate.

This is a very easy failure mode for humans. Probably vast majority of Westerns would not really dare to try to improve on what Einstein figured, out of too much respect. Thankfully it is not so in academia.