Fundamentalism is a Great Threat Against Islam

A fundamentalist is someone who appears to live by the requirements of a faith, but who actually lives by nonsense that has been added to it later, or even makes up nonsense for himself. There may be fundamentalists in all faiths. The most distinguishing feature of a fundamentalist is that he refuses to abide by the rules of the faith to which he claims to belong but adopts his own conception of religion and attempts to impose that on society as a whole. Practices that are not actually part of a faith can easily be made part of it in the fundamentalist’s eyes. Matters external to that faith can shamelessly be applied, murder even can be committed in the name of religion, societies can be swamped in ignorance, people can be pressurized and the true faiths that insist on love can be misrepresented as religions of hate. That is what makes fundamentalists so dangerous.

As we have just seen, fundamentalists can emerge from all religions. In the same way that there are Christian fundamentalists who totally misrepresent Christianity and portray that religion of love as one of hatred, so there are fundamentalists who also seek to misrepresent Islam. The mindset that is equated with anger, ignorance, hatred, suicide killings and slaughter under the name of Islam, that opposes science, art and all fine things, that takes no pleasure from blessings and that assumes an attitude that loathes Christians and Jews, is the mindset of fundamentalists, not of Muslims. Many people criticize this strange image that they wrongly equate with Islam and therefore oppose Islam itself. But what they should really be opposing is not Islam, but fundamentalism and the radical mindset.