Are the Taliban Fundamentalists?
Is the Texas anti-abortion law like Shari'a?
Well people seem to be saying so, but they are wrong, maliciously wrong. The Taliban are not Fundamentalists, and Texas anti-abortion law isn't like Islamic Shari'a.
To understand why we need to go back in history a bit.
The first religious use of the word "fundamentalism" was coined at Princeton Divinity School over 120 years ago. A group of Protestant Christian theologians led by Benjamin Warfield were alarmed by the influence of modern ideas on Christianity. They therefore formulated a list of what they saw as the fundamentals of Christian teaching. They and those who followed them proudly called themselves "fundamentalists."
And what were the fundamentals? Well they asserted that the authoritative basis for Christian teaching was Bible, which was without error and should be interpreted literally. Secondly they asserted that five doctrines were fundamental: The total depravity of humankind, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. None of these beliefs have any relationship to Islam, so clearly the Taliban are not fundamentalists in this sense.
Through the twentieth century the word fundamentalist gradually lost its popularity among conservative Christians, most of whom preferred to call themselves Evangelicals. They had a little different take on being faithful in the modern world.
However, the term fundamentalism was revived and introduced into the formal study of religion by Martin Marty and others who launched the "Fundamentalism Project" in 1987. They were trying to identify common characteristics across movements in many different religions. Perhaps the most important long term effect of the project was that it legitimized using the term fundamentalist for groups in any religion, and not just a specifically Christian groups. The project never succeeded in creating a definition for fundamentalism that could usefully be applied across many religions, although it certainly stimulated a lot study of emerging religious groups. It is now 20 years or more out of date.
But there was another factor influencing the use of the term "fundamentalism." Long before the Fundamentalism Project began liberal and progressive Christians had come to use the word "fundamentalist" as a broad term of derision for any Christian who didn't share a liberal theology and progressive political agenda. It wasn't a theological description, it was an emotional ejaculation.
With the extension of the word "fundamentalist" to other religions there was a kind of legitimization of using this derisive term against non-Christian religious movements as well. Again not a description, but an expression of emotion.
In short the term "fundamentalist" ultimately had no clear meaning beyond "someone I don't like," and has come to be widely used in that way in American culture.
This has two pernicious results. First, lumping together all conservative religious groups with militant and even terrorist religious groups like the Taliban casts derision and hate on peaceful, innocent religious movements that happen to resist modernity and progressive politics. This is particularly harmful to Conservative Muslims and Orthodox Jews, who face endemic islamophobia and anti-semitism already.
The second pernicious result is that it actually obscures the truth about the Taliban and similar Islamic movements. And it thus makes it impossible to engage in public discourse about how they should be engaged politically and religiously.
So what are the Taliban? Well they are not a group interested in getting back to the fundamentals of Islam. In fact their embrace of terrorism, their violence against religious minorities, their tribal interpretations of Islamic law and government, and their treatment of women are radically different from the fundamentals of Islam, even in its orthodox pre-modern forms.
Beyond this the Taliban didn't organize around the rejection of modernity, like the original fundamentalists. They organized in opposition to colonization by the Soviet Union and subsequently by their opposition to any government supported by an outside power. Or more bluntly: the Taliban are organized around a desire for the political and military power in order to implement and enforce their radical Pashtun nationalist religious agenda against an unwilling population.
In saying this I don't mean that they don't have religious motives, or at least religious excuses for their behavior. I mean that these motives and excuses aren't based on the historically and widely recognized fundamentals of Islam. So calling the Taliban "fundamentalists" both misleads efforts to combat them and denigrates the teaching of Islam and the vast majority of Muslims.
So what about Texas' anti-abortion law as a form of Shari'a? The same problem. Except this time people totally ignorant of what Shari'a really is are using it as a kind of byword for laws they don't like. They use it as insult against Texas law when all they really do is insult our intelligence. You cannot fight what you do not rationally describe, and insulting potential allies (for Shari'a may be on your side) isn't a good political strategy.
The term "fundamentalist" is void of intellectual content and serves primarily to focus ill will on religions and religious movements that may be perfectly innocent. It is high time to banish it from both religious and public public discourse. Similarly the term Shari'a as used in anti-Muslim and anti-Texas polemic is without rational content and only serves to obscure the truth about both Muslims and Texas.
It may take a few more words to describe a religious movement with which one disagrees, or a law that one finds loathsome, but that is burden those engaged in adult conversation are obliged to bear.
