Hatred of the Fundamentals

One effect of Islamic religious terrorism is to strengthen the Secular Humanistic bias against various forms of religious orthodoxy. One can see it in the use of the word “Fundamentalism” in the mainstream to refer to backward, violent religous people who really do not belong in the modern world. An overt extension of this meaning is that “Fundamentalism” is the root cause of the many of the world’s current ills.

In reality, the term Fundamentalism really refers particularly to Christians who closely study their text, the Bible, and adhere to its tenets:

fun·da·men·tal·ism
1 a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching b : the beliefs of this movement c : adherence to such beliefs

Merriam-Webster Online Version, 2006

Secular Humanism in particular has been fixed on the demonization of Biblical Christianity by using Islamic violence to butress their hatred of Christians who dare to adhere to their beliefs:

Together, the two installments make vivid the fact that our Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as their Muslim fundamentalists.

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

— The Fundmentalist Agenda, Davidson Loehr, January 2004

To be fair, there are violent extremists who use Christianity to rationalize their criminal acts. There should be no tolerance for the bombers of abortion clinics. However, this is hardly a common movement. The real point of this propaganda of equating Christian orthodoxy with Islamic violence is to capitalize on the current world situation to further marginalize and descriminate against a particular religious group. The net effect of this movement is an increasingly hostile climate against the Judeo-Christian ethics that were once central to this nation. As Islamic violence increases, much of it as in Sudan, Indonesia, and other nations directed against Jews and Christians, it ironically feeds the continued view that Fundmentalism is the problem, and must be wiped out. Like the scape-goats of 1930’s Germany, this ideology will lead only to widespread persecution and perhaps overt violence.

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More related links:

A Warning About ‘Christian Fascists’