Is religious extremism a minority within the vast majority of religious persons ?

I think that you have to look past the particular religion and look to reasons that people turn to religion. Poverty, lack of jobs, lack of opportunity for betterment, entrenched class systems, etc. Yes there appears to be a lot of Islamic extremists but if Christianity were the major religion of the region then you would be looking at Christian extremists doing the same thing.

In answer to your question, yes, the number of extremists (or it seems in many cases, fundamentalists) within a given religion is certainly a minority of those who profess to follow a particular set of tenets.

By definition, yes.

Of course extremism by its very definition is always the position of a minority. You can’t be an extremist if “everybody’s doin it”. The reaction to Islamic extremists is of course predictable, just as the acts themselves should certainly be expected. A much more sensible approach to dealing with them would be to neglect the religious pretexts for all the mischief, and concentrate on the actual motives of their proponents. Thirty years ago when the IRA was raising hell and blowing shit up, the news hype was rarely about Catholic terrorists.

Yes.

Extreme situations give rise to extremist solutions, religious and political. Muslim extremism is a result of instability in the Muslim world rather than any flaws inherent in Islam. When society breaks down people look for answers and they will be drawn to the absolute truths of extremism. In less traumatic times extremism gets marginalised.

Does extremism always mean violent? I think extremism should be defined. People throw around that word a lot.

Extremism is holding an extreme view, in this case a religious extreme view. It is then taking that extreme view an acting on it in any way necessary to enforce it onto others (even if it causes violence). It also means perform extreme acts in response to offending belief.

So in answer to your question @JLeslie it doesn’t always mean violence, but extremism has a string temdency to lead to violence

It’s certainly a minority, but there are pockets around the world where the numbers are big. Look at some of the Mormon sects in America. The majority are lovely, normal, people, and then there are extremes examples where people live on closed campuses basically, girls are married off to polygamist men as young teenagers and some of the teenage boys are cast out. Or, other Christians who try to change laws to control society so people will follow the dictates of their brand of Christianity. I guess you aren’t counting things like some Orthodox Jews who only really try to control their family and there is peer pressure in the group. They use shunning and ostracizing and pressure to control their children, wives, neighbors, but they do not try control greater society. Not all orthodox do what I named, just some sects. The Amish are similar.

The Muslims, all I know is most Muslims I know in America are very nice, educated, normal, Americans. There also seems to be plenty of countries with Muslims that are peaceful and women are educated and westernized. But, there is a very large number of theocracy governments run Muslims and groups of Muslims popping up that they are wreaking some havoc. They are a minority among the many muslims in the world, but they still have a real presence.

America continues to be allies with countries who seem to support extremism to some level. Other western countries too. The old the enemy if my enemy is my friend and dependence on oil doesn’t help. It’s pretty annoying.

In your own country, Ireland, all that crazy fighting between the Protestants and the Catholics for years. That was some crazy terrorist stuff. It wasn’t too long ago. You still have public schools run by religions as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong). Plenty of people in America would like to have government funded religious schools here, but luckily we have resisted that route.

The overwhelming majority of people in this world hold their religious views as nothing more than a matter of habit. They don’t know much about the religion the claim adherence to, they incorporate only the bare skeleton of its dogma into their lives, and they spend most of their lives thinking about other things until some event makes their religion more salient to them (like a religious holiday or a family emergency). It’s just one aspect of their overall socialization, no more or less important than their national identity (another thing some people get worked up over). They are the silent majority, and you’re never going to hear from them.

Anyone talking loud enough for you to hear them already cares more than is normal, and that includes anyone on this website. It’s the Pareto principle: 20% of any group produces 80% of its activity. And it gets even more severe on the internet, where there are even more passive users and fewer active voices. The harder something is to do, the fewer people will do it. As easy as it is to sign up for a Fluther account, very few people will ever do it. And of the people who do, very few will ever post anything. And of the people who post something, very few will post more than once. Every opinion you hear expressed via the media or the internet comes from someone who cares more than is usual.