Page 267 - Christians Must Heed Jesus

Adnan Oktar
Harun Yahya

fundamentalist is someone who ap-
pears to live by the requirements of
a faith, but who actually lives by su-
perstitions that have been added to it
later, or even makes up superstitions
for himself. There may be fundamentalists
in all faiths. The most distinguishing feature of a fundamentalist is
that he not only refuses to abide by the rules of the faith to which he
claims to belong, but adopts his own concept of religion and attempts
to impose that on society as a whole. Practices that are not actually part
of a faith can easily be made part of it in the fundamentalist's eyes.
Matters external to that faith can shamelessly be applied, and even
murder can be committed in the name of religion, societies can be
swamped in ignorance, people can be pressured and the true faiths
that insist on love can be misrepresented as religions of hate. That is
what makes fundamentalists so dangerous.
As we have just seen, fundamentalists can emerge from all reli-

gions. In the same way that there are Christian fundamentalists who
totally misrepresent Christianity and portray that religion of love as
one of hatred, so there are fundamentalists who also seek to misrep-
resent Islam. The mindset that is equated with anger, ignorance, ha-
tred, suicide killings and slaughter under the name of Islam, that op-
poses science, art and all fine things, that takes no pleasure from
blessings and that assumes an attitude that loathes Christians and
Jews, is the mindset of fundamentalists, not of true Muslims. Many
people criticize this strange image that they wrongly equate with Is-
lam and therefore oppose Islam itself. But what they should really be
opposing is not Islam, but fundamentalism and the radical mindset.

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