A Typology: Part Three

The Extremists
So, I suppose it's time to deal with the not so savory folks, the ones who really cannot be defended and who most of us would rather not call brothers.  For Christians, I think the best recent example would be the Westboro Baptist church, those of the "God hates fags" protests. These are the extremists.  In Islam they are ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram, and Al Quaida.
In the last century the left had it's share of violent extremists, in fact, if you count Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, they really did terror on a scale that probably gave Osama Bin Laden a giddy shiver, but extremists tend to be reacting against something, the dominant trend of society or a monarchy or a social order, and right now, most of what Jon Stewart just called "team Civilization" is on a trend towards permissiveness and inclusivity.  We are losing a lot of our hangups about sex, drugs and generally embracing a highly relativistic morality.  The Islamists call it Western Decadence, and perhaps that's what it is, but it's increasingly hard to say that the attitudes of openness and decreasing our general judgmental attitudes are any sort of a-priori evil.
Where fundamentalists like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell might have tiptoed up to the edge of totally drinking the hater-ade, they never advocated violence or some sort of religious pogrom against homosexuals or women who had abortions.  There has been violence for sure, but it's done by wing-nuts and criminals, usually in relative isolation, and it was roundly condemned by the fundamentalists.  Over time the action of a very few unbalanced individuals has actually led to a relative moderation of rhetoric even among the fireballers, and it has led to a rather dramatic shift in the attitude of John Q. Public.  I have this theory that the blatant and abhorrent homophobia of Fred Phelps and WBC, actually pushed a whole lot of fence sitting Christians in the direction of inclusivity, because when they looked at the relative merits of the homosexual community over against the hateful rabble rousing of the Westboro people, they saw pretty clearly where the evil was actually living.
I am hoping and praying that the same thing is taking place within Islam as we speak.  If all of this leads to an end to this particular brand of extremist violence, then it will be yet another example of one of those things that is wholly and intentionally evil (think Joseph's brothers or Judas Iscariot), but which God can use in the long view for a greater good.
Unfortunately, there will probably always be extremists, because there's just too much fear and anger out there in the world.  Change breeds extremists in some way that may, in fact, be unavoidable.
At the moment, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus all have extremist factions, as do atheists and secular sorts, but for the most part the majority exercises some general control over them.  The only case where this is not true presently is Islam, but at the risk of being too optimistic, I believe that the current state of affairs is not a fatal disease, but it is a serious cancer.
Time and exposure are not working in the extremists favor.  Just as American Christians have been able to see that the people with the "God hates fags" signs are far more of an abomination to the Lord than some adorable old lesbians getting married in New Hampshire, so I think Muslims are realizing that the extreme demonizing of western culture by a minority of their number is probably not all in good fun.
It remains to be seen whether the majority can abnegate and otherwise delegitimize the hate mongers among them.  Here's hoping.