Moderate and fundamentalist are widely used
measures of value.
Moderate is understood to be - reasonable and not extreme, while fundamentalist is used to describe rigid adherence to a principle.
Quite often these words preface the word Christian or Muslim as if the measure of a belief reliant on an absolute set of instruction can ever be sensibly applied to the relative concept of moderate or extreme.
Moderate is understood to be - reasonable and not extreme, while fundamentalist is used to describe rigid adherence to a principle.
Quite often these words preface the word Christian or Muslim as if the measure of a belief reliant on an absolute set of instruction can ever be sensibly applied to the relative concept of moderate or extreme.
The use of this terminology is misleading by design. It has a powerful pejorative association which promotes confusion and misunderstanding.
Religious belief is a simple set of
constructs which succeeds mainly because of its on or off value. You either believe or you don't. The degree to which you believe
plays no part in this arrangement. If it did - if you could say - I am a
Christian most of the time, but occasionally I moderate my Christianity by
dabbling in the Occult, then, clearly, you are not a Christian. You are either
subject to the dictate of the belief, or you are not.
Belief is in this sense comparable to
Virginity. A clearly defined circumstance determines the yes or no to the
question. It makes no sense beyond deliberately misleading to suggest one is a
moderate virgin or a fundamentalist one.
If you are a Christian - you believe Jesus is the son of God, conceived by a virgin birth who died and was reborn, and who will fix it for you to spend eternity in heaven. Its a pretty straightforward set of yes or no constructs. You cannot be both a believer and a denier of the factual determining aspects of the belief.
Islam is identical in this regard, and its the same with all religion. You believe or you don't believe. That is what determines whether you are a Muslim, a Christian or whatever you belief. The issue of piety is a separate matter, not related to the yes or no of moderate or fundamentalist belief.
If you are a Christian - you believe Jesus is the son of God, conceived by a virgin birth who died and was reborn, and who will fix it for you to spend eternity in heaven. Its a pretty straightforward set of yes or no constructs. You cannot be both a believer and a denier of the factual determining aspects of the belief.
Islam is identical in this regard, and its the same with all religion. You believe or you don't believe. That is what determines whether you are a Muslim, a Christian or whatever you belief. The issue of piety is a separate matter, not related to the yes or no of moderate or fundamentalist belief.
Suggesting one believes a lot more than
another is as ridiculous as suggesting one virgin is more extremist in the yes
answer to the question of her virginity.
Often this condemnatory and misleading representation - fundamentalist - is used to somehow imply that one believer is bad while other believers - who are moderate - are less bad. The purpose this serves is to obfuscate the reality that all believers rely on the same imagined perception, the mighty all-seeing god, from which any justification for any lunacy can be established. 'Oh, he's a fundamentalist and that why he did it' protects the lunatic aspect of the belief from association. But its deceit word play. You either believe or you don't believe.
Despite the convenience it represents for journalists, there is no such thing as a moderate Christian or a fundamentalist Muslim any more than there is a fundamentalist virgin and a moderate pedophile.
