Quit Calling Muslims "Fundamentalists"

Fundamentalism was a Christian movement in the United States during the early decades of the 20th century, largely reactionary against the rise of Darwinism and higher literary cricism of the Bible. It is earmarked by the 1910-1915 publication of a twelve-volume work called The Fundamentals which beckoned people of faith to affirm the authority of scripture over all other sources of knowledge, including of course natural science but also higher criticism of the Bible. It was a return to faith's "fundamentals." The movement accordingly called for a historical, literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Read a pretty good article about it on americanscientist.org.

However this Fundamentalist movement was characterized by a selective method of biblical exegesis, assuming that there was only one way to interpret scripture literally (when in fact, as we realize now, there are many ways to interpret any text "literally" -- but I won't bother reviewing the hermeneutical theory behind that). Yet there were many other committed Christians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who accepted Darwinian evolution as an insightful contribution to our understanding of how God created humankind. (For goodness' sake Darwin himself was a Christian and never ceased to be one!) But the Fundamentalists felt that this shift compromised the integrity of God's revelation, the Bible. Fundamentalism was a specifically Christian development contextualized in an age of increasing secularization and a perceived minimalization of scriptural importance. Notice: It had nothing to do with Islam!

First of all, the word "fundamentalist" is extremely problematic when it is lifted out of its original early 20th-century American context (read some of this history in the Wikipedia article; it states that the material's neutrality is contested but I feel it is a helpful overview). Apart from that group of Protestant Christians (who are now long gone), who does "fundamentalist" really describe, and how? What's the definition of "fundamentalism"? You cannot say that it is a literal interpretation of scripture; there are countless literal interpretations! Which one are you talking about? And look at the flip-side; even the most hard-core "fundamentalists" don't take all the Bible literally, otherwise they would think, for example, that God is comprised of minerals (Deuteronomy 32:4, "He is the rock..."). Fundamentalists are thus selective of which parts of the Bible they take literally (as anyone should be anyway -- and everyone is). So if you take at least some of it literally, are you a fundamentalist? Well, 99% of New Testament scholars, including even the most skeptical ones, take literally the following historically-loaded lines: "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, ... John, the son of Zacharias came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Luke 3:1-3). Most also take "Jesus settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali" (Matthew 4:13) and "after having Jesus scourged, they handed him over to be crucified" (Matthew 27:26) literally. Are they all fundamentalists?? "Fundamentalism" is a word riddled with vagaries.

Furthermore, which Muslims call themselves "fundamentalists"? I'll give you a hint: the numbe of Muslims who call themselves fundamentalists is the same as the number of people that Jesus killed. (For the scripturally illiterate, that's NONE... And I use this illustration for a point that I'll make in the next paragraph.) If Muslims don't label themselves fundamentalists, why should we fool ourselves by thinking there are some covert prohibition-era Protestants who have converted to Islam and brought their hermeneutics with them? Every group has a right to label itself. If we deny it that right, we have dubbed ourselves members of and authorities over that group -- and we are emphatically not. If you name a group something other than its self-chosen title, you have turned yourself into a propagandist. Example: Left-wing newspapers like the Associated Press and other media conglomerates like CNN have endorsed the epithet "anti-abortion" rather than calling the group what it calls itself (pro-life). Words with "anti" in them generally have negative connotations, and if you don't like a group that calls itself pro-life, then label them by what sounds pejorative, so that there is a negative emotion tied to the word. "Fundamentalism" also has a pejorative connotation, and is used almost solely to describe a group with which a journalist/writer/pundit disagrees, be it Christian or Muslim.

I've also heard some people associate fundamentalism with militant groups... but the movement in the early 20th century was anything BUT militant! It was a doctrinal and exegetical counter-cultural development. (See the first two paragraphs.) A proper definition of Fundamentalism can never include both the violent Islamic movements we see today and the early 20th century movement. They are different in almost every way. To call them both fundamentalist only causes embarassing confusion and misinformation.

This is largely because fundamentalism creates the illusion that taking the Bible "literally" incites similar behavior as taking the Qur'an "literally." We've already discussed the fallacy of assuming that there is only one literal interpretation of any text (there are always many literal interpretations), but further, Christian "fundamentalists" behave quite differently than Muslim "fundamentalists." The Muslim ones are willing to blow up civilians while they drink lattes in coffee shops and commute to work on buses. The Christian ones stand in front of abortion clinics trying to convince women of the beauty and wonder of bringing life into the world -- and they condemn the rare, fringe lunatics who have bombed them. (Can you think of a single Christian leader of any reputability who thinks it's okay to kill abortionists? Neither can I. Yet there are international Islamic organizations and even Islamic governmental leaders who openly justify suicide bombing.) The Muslim "fundamentalists" and the Christian "fundamentalists" are very, very different. ...But notice again -- NEITHER GROUP CALLS ITSELF FUNDAMENTALIST in the first place!

So to sum up the points I've made:

• The Fundamentalist movement was a Protestant reaction to Darwinian evolution, German higher criticism, and other influences on Christian belief.
• Apart from association with this historical movement, there is no consistent definition of "fundamentalism."
• Muslim fundamentalists are different from Christian fundamentalists in almost every way. It's ridiculous to lump them together with the same term.
• They don't call themselves fundamentalists in the first place, so it's irresponsible, presumptuous, deceptive, and arrogant of us to label them (much more to label them with something they aren't even associated with).

The word is useless. Stop calling Muslims fundamentalists.