Making fals equivalency between Christian and islamic 'fundemantalists'

[TaraJo]

This kinda touches on something I heard a friend of mine talk about in a blog post a while ago. You can read the full thing there, but she did spot an alarming parallel between American, Christian fundamentalists and Middle East, Islamic fundamentalists. You can read it in full here:
http://www.transadvocate.com/genevieve/

I used to do Counter Insurgency (COIN) analysis on religious fanatics for a living. When they thought that they were winning, or at least had a good chance, they played “nicer” in order to keep some of the population on their side. They had certain moral boundaries that they generally wouldn’t cross, such as kidnapping women for ransom and such. When they thought they had won (i.e. no U.S. or Iraqi forces anywhere to be found for years at a time), they dropped their veneer of populism and their “morality” and did things which were unacceptable to the local populace. This included kidnapping unmarried women and forcing them to be their wives, or shooting people for smoking or listening to music. Conversely, when it became clear they were losing, they became desperate, and no longer made any attempt to make a favorable case to the local population. All rules of engagement that might have been there before were gone, and moralconstraints to their courses of action completely disappeared. The scary thing was al Qaeda in Iraq caused an immense amount of havoc because of this amorality, while enjoying very limited public support (10-20% at any given time).

So, when Rick Santorum goes down in flames, and the massive electoral victory for President Obama becomes a mandate for the social change he has been promoting, you have to wonder what all of Santorum’s true believers will do. They lost, and if they have any notion of trend analysis, will realize that things aren’t going to improve. Younger people are increasingly pro-LGBT rights, and pro-choice. They are less religious, and when religious they are usually drawn to the kinds of Protestantism that Santorum finds “un-Christian”. Evangelicals blamed McCain’s defeat on McCain not being conservative, or pure, enough. This time, they got exactly who they wanted, and he will be beaten even more badly than McCain was in what should have been a winnable election.

What will they do? They will feel rejected, defeated, and isolated. They will be confronting the horrors of a nation where discriminating against LGBT people is punishable by law, and same sex couples are free to marry. To them, it will seem like the end of times, and they the last of God’s chosen. If history is any indication, many of the rules they abided by before will go by the wayside. Which ones, and how they choose to break them, is unpredictable. We are already seeing some of them fall, though. When was the last time a parties’ top candidate called the President a non-Christian, and his supporters agents of Satan? How much less civil will they be when they lose, and lose big?

The religious extremists are out there and they very well could be coming out of the woodwork.