Certain religious minorities which are considered as “sects”...

Certain religious minorities which are considered as “sects” in the West are perfectly orthodox religious expressions. Such is the case with Shī‘ite Islām in the Middle East, Buddhism or Taoism in the Far East, to mention some of the most common examples. But, as we have seen, the tendency to give Shī‘ite Islām the stigma of “sect” is premeditated. It is not by chance that some “opinion-makers” and Orientalists have agreed on applying this term.

The definition of “sect,” as they know better than anyone else, can conveniently be substituted--in a theological and philosophical sense--by the more insidiously political and provocative one which defines a sect as a “group of partisans with extreme and violent ideas.” Faced with simplistic and reductionist interpretations which are obsessed with grouping all religious minorities under one general label, the indiscriminate application of the term “sect” continues to be accepted.

This is despite the fact that the commonly accepted meaning of the term is nothing more than a convention or a deep-rooted prejudice accepted by all without reserve.

Even among educated people, the very idea of “sect” always presupposes a deep-rooted reactionary and intolerant attitude, which is how the factio [sect] can be recognized and differentiated from the other majority “factions.” If anything novel is added to this connotation, it reduces itself to concrete applications that are called upon by the same semantic concessions of language that adapt to changing circumstances.

We refer specifically to the neologism “fundamentalism” which implies an entire axiological classification which, when dealing with Shī‘ite Islām, even descends to the basest contempt.[^4] The term “fundamentalist” can be correctly applied to American Protestantism since its attitude and behavior is consistent with such a definition. However, the new tendency is to give the term a political sense linking it even more strongly with Shī‘ite Islām.

The use of the term “fundamentalist” in a political sense is really a recent development. It traces back to the famous controversy between American Protestants and the supporters of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

The dispute centered on the question as to whether state education should be separated from religion as a means to promote the atheist doctrine of evolution which is incompatible with the idea of God and divine creation.[^5] At that time, the use of the term “fundamentalist” was far from commonplace.