Religion has a long history of inspiring people to preform acts of brilliant generosity or extreme violence. Unfortunately the latter seems to happen more often than not. When used as a tool to promote well being and kindness the power of an organized religion is impressive and can genuinely make a massive impact on many peoples lives. Where evil creeps into the equation is through the uneducated and hate filled mind set of extremism. The definition of extremism is 'any political (religious) theory favoring immoderate uncompromising policies.' At the moment in the west the idea of extremism is heavily linked to Islam. Mainly due to the past decades terrorist attacks on most notable America but also European countries. This view however is fueled by the mass media's extensive coverage of absolutely any story that could be linked to terrorist activity. Going as far as informing the population when the danger alert changes from red to pink. To be perfectly honest I've no idea what they even mean any more. Normally red means very bad but apparently that is just the tip of ammo dump. Each color has different levels and the more the government changes it the less the population care. The authorities comeback to this is that people need to know when they are in danger but according to their system we've been in grave circumstances for about ten years. With the exception of the London underground and bus bombing, attacks on the UK have been so few that you've more chance choking on your chips and cheese that your ramming down your throat than experiencing a terrorist's wrath. If you believe these warning the only item of clothing you could wear would be a Kevlar jacket combined with green and black face paint. This does not mean that there is no danger but polluting the headlines with which scary Arab man is going to murder your girlfriend first is not helping the situation. Looking back at the west reveals that we have some real dedicated extremists ourselves. Most recently Harold Camping told his thousands of followers to sell everything they own as the rapture was fast approaching (21st of may, tonight in fact) which was based on some sums he did in the back of the bible. Funny thing is that those good folks listened to him. If that is not an extreme reaction I don't know what is. Before Camping there was Terry Jones the nice priest who burned Koran and made some already angry people slightly more enraged. Did these men do any harm? Yes, yes they **** did. Using expletives is not usually the best way to convey your point to an intelligent audience (that's you) but Camping, Jones and fundamentalists the world over have a funny way of making cool headed citizens want find the biggest stick possible and beat these lie peddling animal molesters around the face until they cannot spread their filth any more. Which ironically is an extreme reaction. By telling people to sell up because god was coming Camping made their lives poorer. When Jones burned Islams holy book it provoked a group of extremists to ran sack a UN compound in Afghanistan and kill around 12 people (no of which were American nationals). Their actions had real consequences and they will answer to non of them. How would I handle Fundamentalism? Lock each sect that disagrees with each other in a big dirty cage, see which side is killed first and let the other starve to death. Unfortunately that wouldn't solve any problems and would be mirroring the extremist behavior. If I did know how to solve all the hate and violence around the world I would be a very rich man. Until then I'll keep moaning about it.