Despite the fact that the ethical, cultural backgrounds of Muslims from around the world are vastly different, they are all put together in a box. They are discriminated against on basis of their perceived beliefs and names. The Runnymede Trust in its 1997 Report acknowledged that the racism against Muslims goes by without being challenged as Muslims are not sociologically & geographically a \u2018racial group.\u2019 This is an interesting contradiction that needs a closer look.
\nRacism is a belief that certain race possesses behavioral traits and physical appearances that are very different from the others and can be discriminated on grounds of others being superior to them. Basically racism is antagonistic and prejudiced against, because they are of a different ethnicity\/race. However, it is clear that different Muslims from different countries are different from each other on the basis of culture, lifestyles, physical appearance and so on. So the discrimination is strictly religious discrimination and placing it under the umbrella of racism may not be correct. \u201cWhile Islam is not a race, it is argued that Muslims can nevertheless be racialized. Racialization is a contested concept that arose in scholarly circles in the wake of the gradual discrediting (not disappearance) of doctrines of biological superiority and difference, which led-in some circles-to a shift from race to culture as the marker of group superiority. White people could no longer speak openly about being biologically superior but could claim to have a superior culture that makes them more advanced, developed, and civilized, and this cultural superiority is then used to justify policies of domination and exclusion.\u201d (Caner K. Dagli specializes in Qur\u2019anic studies, interfaith dialogue, and philosophy: College of Holy Cross)
\nThe question that arises here is: are all Muslims as a race religious extremists? And are Muslims alone extremists to the exclusion of followers of other religion? History does not support this view.
\nIn any given religion the beliefs followed may take different forms. These include the Moderates. The Fundamentalists. The Extremists. The Militants. The moderates\u2019 belief is not watered down as compared to other categories. They implicitly believe in their beliefs & practices but understand that different knowledge comes from different kinds of sources.
\nUntil 1950, there was no entry for fundamentalism in the Oxford English Dictionary; the derivative, fundamentalist, was added only in its second, 1989 edition. The Fundamentalists do believe that only their way of thinking is correct as opposed to any other. However, a Fundamentalist need not be an extremist or a militant. Extremism may broadly be defined as, \u201c\u201dthe quality or state of being extreme\u201d or \u201cthe advocacy of extreme measures or views\u201d. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) If one historically views the Christian Fundamentalists, one can see that they observe the world from a Manichean view that bases its conflict of doctrine like light vs dark. There are no shades of gray in-between. Christian Fundamentalism for example began among British & American Protestants as early as 19th & 20th Century. They opposed the theologians whom they accused of misinterpreting certain doctrines that formed the basis of Christian faith like biblical inerrancy. They always have an approach of interpreting the Bible literally.
\nAccording to authors Robert D. Woodberry and Christian S. Smith:
\nFollowing the Civil War, tensions developed between Northern evangelical leaders over Darwinism and higher biblical criticism; Southerners remained unified in their opposition to both (Marsden 1980, 1991). Modernists attempted to update Christianity to match their view of science. They denied biblical miracles and argued that God manifests himself through the social evolution of society. Conservatives resisted these changes. These latent tensions rose to the surface after World War I in what came to be called the fundamentalist\/modernist split. (Woodberry, Robert D; Smith, Christian S. (1998). \u201cFundamentalism et al: conservative Protestants in America\u201d. Annual Review of Sociology. 24 (1): 25-56.)
\nReligious Militancy is yet another layer of approach. Religion can be a powerful aphrodisiac to unite people and mobilize them. They can be not only used but also misused in this way. Religious extremism can & does arise within a religion against different points of view that lead to conflict & subsequently militancy. Many Jewish thinkers & militants hold the view that Golan Heights & Gaza are a permanent part of Eretz Israel (Translated it means \u201cLand of Israel\u201d). They support larger Jewish establishments in the occupied areas with a view to marginalize Palestinian settlements. The Israeli army has killed more Palestinians in the intifadas than the other way round.
\nThe brief discourse hopefully clarifies that any religion has different cultural, ethnical groups of people that cannot be jointly labelled under one heading. Even within one religion different individuals have different approaches towards religion. Also, this is not one-religion specific. It applies to all religions.
\nIt was not until the Islamic Iranian Revolution that the term \u2018Islamic fundamentalism\u2019 was coined. This made it easy for the West to relate to what was happening in that part of the world, as they were well aware of Christian fundamentalism.
\nPew Research Center in an interesting research, in a report stated that from a period of 2007 till 2017 government restrictions on laws, religious freedom, beliefs & their practices have increased manifold. In its Tenth Annual Report, PEW presents the data that 52 governments including Russia & China placed a high restriction on religion. The percentage has gone up by 40% from 2007.
\nReligious militancy is intertwined with religious terrorism. According to Juergensmeyer, religion and violence have had a symbiotic relationship since before the Crusades and even since before the Bible. (Juergensmeyer, Mark (2004). Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. University of California Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite the fact that the ethical, cultural backgrounds of Muslims from around the world are vastly different, they are all put together in a box. They are discriminated against on basis of their perceived beliefs and names. The Runnymede Trust in its 1997 Report acknowledged that the racism against Muslims goes by without being challenged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article"],"yoast_head":"\n