God's Warriors

Watching CNN's "God's Warriors" by Christiane Amanpour, I was thinking that while we focused on eradicating Islamic fundamentalism and extremism, we developed our own breed of Christian fundamentalists. Of course, they were in existence long before but now they have received a different color because more people have started supporting them. Under the name of God, these people propagate the politics of hatred and exclusion, nothing more. Quoting from the Bible, they distort it by condemning all others who do not share their moral values. Warning of Armageddon, they preach a return to God, while they already sound like demons. Incidentally, they also instigate people against all those who are not Christian or Jewish. This is fascism, cloaked by religion. Using the name of Christ they have become just like Islamic terrorists who have committed their atrocious acts in the name of Allah. We have seen how the American politics, shaped by Christian fundamentalism and evangelism, has brought this country to a crisis. Now it is really time to sit down and think, think hard, how we can disentangle this mess and minimize the damage that has sprang from the 'God's warriors.' It is freedom of speech and they cannot be stopped from speaking, with a few exceptions. But how we can enlighten folks listening to them, so that they are capable of discerning these messages with an informed mind-- that is the challenge for our intellectuals... The challenge is also to infuse some degree of moderation into the minds of people... Our modern times have revealed that fanatical pursuit of any cause is just unacceptable...