Stop calling religious extremists "fundamentalists"

[Shodan]

I'm getting tired of turning on the news and hearing this shit about "fundamentalists" doing all sorts of horrible things. Christian fundamentalists beat their adopted child to death. Islamic fundamentalist dons C4 vest and blows himself up in a crowded marketplace in Syria. These are the sort of things you hear all the time. But, what, really, is fundamentalism?

If you search up "define:fundamental" on Google, you get this definition:

noun
1.
a central or primary rule or principle on which something is based.

So fundamentalism, then, would be a major reduction of a philosophy to its fundamentals; or, at least, a variation of an ideology which puts an unusual amount of emphasis on its fundamentals. It would be an ideology that emphasizes its central or primary rules and principles.

Therefore, Christian fundamentalism would be a religious philosophy based on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. This would include such ideas as: Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins, and that anyone who believes in this will have his sins forgiven; that you should love thy neighbor as thyself; and that you should strive to spread this message far and wide (I'm no theologian, but that's what I think of as being the "fundamentals" of modern Christianity). You might add in the Ten Commandments, or some of the other teachings of Jesus and his apostles. When I look at the Ten Commandments, I see "Thou shalt not kill," and I don't see "Thou shalt bomb abortion clinics and burn the Qu'ran, Yahwehu Akbar."

Same thing with Islamic fundamentalism, except it's a little bit less clear-cut, because one of the original pillars was jihad. Again, I'm not exactly a Mufti, but, if memory serves, jihad was suspended a very long time ago, at least as a requirement for able-bodied Muslim males. So, then, Islamic fundamentalism would be adherence to the Five Pillars of Islam: testifying in the form of the Shahada, making the Hajj pilgrimage, fasting and exercising self-control during Ramadan, paying the poor-tax, and performing the five ritual daily prayers. Again, looking over these principles, I just can't find the part where it says to set off pressure-cooker bombs at marathons, or run over people in Jerusalem with a stolen tractor.

So, stop calling this shit "fundamentalism." It's extremism. Extremism is the sociological equivalent of a particularly AIDS-infested strain of brain cancer, whereas fundamentalism is often actually a good thing, if not the best thing ever.