Evangelicals and the Taliban: cut from the same cloth.

The right wing radical movements of Christianity and Islam are very similar.

Now that lead-in sentence is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, but it is very true. Both groups denounce those who do not bend to their beliefs as infidels and traitors.  They base all their actions on some order of a “holy scripture” which they are the sole arbitrator of interpretation.

Both the Christian right and the Islamic fundamentalist believe that women are inferior. They believe in a “Bible/Koran” based law. They believe they are persecuted. They believe in some form of paranoid reactionary obligation to strike out at anything that is not like them.

They both try and stir up the “undereducated and uneducated masses with rhetoric that will inflame passions and get them to march for their causes: even riot when necessary.

They both believe in an archaic system of laws and rules that are unbendable in their interpretation. They both want to limit the access to polls to those of their persuasion. I love this one, they both point to President Obama as the cause of the problems.  (He must be doing something right, then.)

Contraception and women’s health are of little to no concern to either side. Education and science are of little use to them either, as are rational thinking and the analytical process. On the other hand, taking their beliefs at face value, following their pack in root formula is considered to be obedience to a higher calling.

Things they cannot answer they shrug off to “God’s will.”  They want to look no further than that. In fact if you do wish to dig past their veneer, it is a sin against their religious beliefs. Faith, after all, doesn’t have to be proved — only practiced.

Both sides are hell bent on making everyone they can find, fall under their regime.  Both sides want power.  Both sides seek ultimate control of society. And both sides peace peace and love, except to those who are different from them. And then their hatred boils over and their venom spews forth.

The Taliban is evil. But so too is the emerging Christian Fundamentalist on the far right. They are no different than the terrorists who would bring us to our knees from without…only their practices will try and do it from within.