Fundamentalism
By Daryl Dominic Tan
It has been awhile since Anders Breivik's outburst of terror struck the otherwise serene kingdom of Norway and left the entire world gasping, but what really irked me most about the entire tumultuous saga was Breivik's “surprising” revelation as a Christian which began the whole asinine labeling process, from “Christian fundamentalist” to “Christian terrorist” to “White knight” to “Knight’s Templar Soldier” and to other preposterous labels over-enthusiastic journalists coughed up as part of their jobs to perplex readers. It suddenly hit the western world as an enormous surprise that Breivik wasn’t Muslim. “How could Breivik be Christian yet an extremist terrorist?” scoffed many Christians who simply refused to believe Breivik was responsible for the horrendous tragedy that struck Norway on the 22nd of July.
In one of his recent interviews, controversial political pundit Bill O’Reilly mentions that Breivik shouldn't be labelled a Christian as the doctrines of Christianity condemns the violence present in his actions. Fair enough, O'Reilly makes sense there, up till the point where I wonder if O’Reilly ever once said the same thing about Islamic Fundamentalists? whether terrorists like Osama Bin Laden have the right to be labelled a Muslim. Islam is a religion of peace afterall, it preaches non-violence and self-discipline. Isn’t it unfair then to call the Taliban or the Hamas Islamic Fundamentalists? The double standards present in O'Reilly's statement is clear and evident enough. This disengaging and stupendous behavior portrayed by O'Reilly and the general public has led me to one conclusion - ignorance.
Has anyone simply forgotten about other Christian Fundamentalists that have existed during our lifetime (well, most of ours)? Does anyone remember or have read about the Branch Davidian sect led by David Koresh? A fundamentalist group that stockpiled more weapons than a local sheriff’s office and turned themselves into a formidable militia that sparked off the infamous Waco Siege where Koresh’s men actually held the FBI off for 50 days? It also resulted in the single most catastrophic man-made disaster before the 9/11 attacks, the Oklahoma City Bombings. Well, conspiracy theories plague these two incidents, but nevertheless, it's pretty clear that Koresh was a fundamentalist.
Most fundamentalist groups primarily believe in "saving" the world through indoctrinating their beliefs upon others by any means possible. And with the media spotlight shining down on the Middle-East right now, I don’t blame the public for being alarmingly afraid of these “Islamic” Fundamentalists for that matter - for they are truly hell-bent on destroying the western world through despicable means (there are reasons behind that). But please, at least when someone of the same religious beliefs, the same skin color, the same look in general, commits such an unfathomable atrocity, do not be surprised that he or she was even capable of something so despicable. Extremism exists ubiquitously in this world whether we like it or not and there’s not a thing we can do about it till the philosophy of individualism can be achieved.
