Response to Anubhav Singh

Submitted by Nabil Ahmad (United States), Mar 16, 2006 at 14:38

To Anubhav Singh:

Actually, fundamentalism among Muslims is a relatively new phenomenon. The strain of fundamentalism in the Islamic world today has its roots in the teachings of Abd-al-Wahab, Syed Qutb, Mawdudi and Abdullah Azzam, three of whom lived in this world within the last 100 years.

As far as religious texts go, one must be careful not to take them literally...it would be a dangerous mistake to do so. Unfortunately, most fundamentalists of all religions and ideologies tend to do this. Also, I have noticed that all fundamentalist and extremist groups have one other thing in common: To return to an imagined time and age when their respective "civilizations" were "untainted" by "foreign influences". Hence the fundamentalist Muslims want to return to the time of the Caliphate. The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia attempted to bring back the kingdom of "Kambuja" that had existed 1000 years ago. Certain Hindu extremists want India to become "Hindutva" again. White supremacists in Europe and North America want to cleanse their lands of race "mongrels". Militant Hispanics in Mexico and SW USA want to "take back what belongs to 'Aztlan'" and throw all non-Hispanic people out of "their" lands. Vladimir Zirnovsky of Russia wants to "take back Alaska" and wants Russia's borders to be returned to what they were during the days of the USSR. The list goes on and on.

Religious texts are like fire and water. One must know how to interpret them coupled with the knowledge of what has happened in history, legal precedents, scientific facts and rational reasoning. Fundamentalists are like spoiled little brats playing with fire and water...they can cause grevious harm to themselves as well as to others around them. When one reads and studies the Scriptures thoroughly with a clear and open mind, (s)he will not come to the same conclusions as the fundamentalists do, who tend to be nothing more than ignorant, narrow-minded, hypocritical fools.

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