Unfortunate use of the word 'Fundamentalism'.

The origin of this word dates back to the beginning of the 20th century when a group of American Evangelicals published a number of volumes between 1909 and 1912 called The Fundamentals in which they asserted their belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The word 'fundamentalist' was then applied - mostly by their opponents - to people of all religions who believe in the literal truth of their sacred texts, and since then it has generally been used as a word of abuse and, because some Muslims are prepared to use violence in imposing this belief on others, many people have come to associate the word with violence.

I have urged people to avoid using the word 'fundamentalist' in any of these senses. To begin with, there is nothing wrong with having fundamental beliefs; indeed we all have - or ought to have - some fundamental beliefs in, for example, the importance of liberty and the rights of free speech.

For people who take the texts of their sacred writings as being literally true, I would use the word 'literalists'. Whatever one may think of literalism in this sense, there are millions of people all over the world who have such beliefs but who are perfectly peaceful and have no wish to impose them on others by force, and it would be an insult to those to associate their beliefs with violence.

For those who do justify violence or other forms of persecution like censorship to impose their literalist beliefs, the most appropriate word is 'fanatics' . Even that word is not ideal: its dictionary meaning does not necessarily imply violence; but violence is a far more usual concomitant of religious fanaticism than it is of literalism.