(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

I'm going to resolve not to make references anymore to "radical Islam" or "fundamentalist Christianity." Radical Islam is not 'radical' in that it doesn't represent the root of Islamic belief; Fundamentalist Christianity is not 'fundamental' in that it doesn't represent the core of Christian belief.

Both movements want people to believe that fundamentalism is what it looks like when you are more fervently religious. That is, they want the rest of us to buy into their position that theirs is the only way to be fervently, devoutly, deeply religious. The mass media, of course, eats this up and serves it back to us as a tasty second harvest.

These movements are at war with me and i refuse to dignify them any longer by utilizing their terminology, along with the implications they carry. Instead i am going to, from now on, refer to both as "reactionary Islam" or "reactionary Christianity."

Comments

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Fundamentalism is actually the name of a specific Christian movement, but tends to be more generally applied by outsiders to those who might not neccesarily claim such a label. Same with charismatic and evangelical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_christianity

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I stand by what I originally said. I know a ton of people who would go down the checklist of beliefs that constitute fundamentalist Christianity and would agree with every one of them, but they would never refer to themselves as fundamentalist Christians. That's a lable applied to them by outsiders. I know plenty of fundamentalist Christians, and every single one refers to him/herself as "Christian" and never as "fundamentalist."