I was recently challenged by a friend to account for my statement that it was possible for someone to be a "moderate" Muslim--or, for that matter, to be a moderate Christian. He further implies that one's adherence to a scientific perspective is not subject to the same modifiers--"moderate" and "extreme"--which seems to him to emphasize the uniquely negative capacity of religion, as opposed to the venture of science. I guess I care about the question, and its possible answers, enough to post this as a status rather than merely as a comment. 

As I am using the term "moderate," it refers mostly to the public manifestations of a person's beliefs or worldview. It only indirectly refers to qualities of their private religious experience. 

Picture this: a Muslim woman who drops her fourth-grader off at school each morning, before she drives to the university where she is on the faculty of the chemistry department. After work, she finds time to attend the monthly PTA meeting. She is horrified by what she sees in the news about what is happening in Iraq, both because of the destruction of human life it represents, and because it associates her, as a Muslim, with practices she would never condone. 

Such people exist. What does it matter to me that she and her family bow their heads in prayer in the privacy of their own home or in the mosque, how many times a day they do so, or what direction they face while doing so? What do I care what text she considers central, provided it produces fruit that is conducive to her positive involvement with society? I would call such a person a moderate Muslim. While she clearly has her own convictions, she can tolerate the fact that others have different views from her own; she neither sets out to destroy or make miserable the lives of those with views different from her own.

The kind of person I am describing as "moderate," in this case, is someone b enough to honor the sanctuary of others' minds, and to honor the right of others to worship or not worship as they see fit, provided their way of doing so does not jeopardize public good or the wellbeing of others. "Moderation," as I am using it, includes flexibility in thought, the ability to interpret language symbolically and not only concretely, and a faith that society is possible (and even enhanced) when it includes a plurality of perspectives. It is eager to guard conditions in public life that make it possible for this ongoing, dynamic dialogue to occur. 

An "extreme" person, of whatever persuasion, is not capable of tempering their conviction in the way described above. They can scarcely rest if they suspect someone might have a view of reality fundamentally different from their own. Their concern extends beyond concern for the public actions and behaviors of others, and intrudes into the realm of their private thoughts. If a neighbor is caring and responsible in every observable way, it will still concern an "extremist" that the neighbor has wrong views about God, politics, or science. The world will be better, the extremist is convinced, when the thought processes of others match his or her own. 

In addition to the imperialistic quality of extremist thought, it also imagines itself to know precisely how particular variables play out in the consciousness and behavior of other people. The reasoning is as follows:

If, in my experience, the concept of God came to involve me in thought processes that were irrational or caused me to neglect important aspects of life, then the same must be true for all others. I will join a social campaign to eradicate the notion of God. If, on the other hand, my own life acquired coherence only when I encountered a particular experience that entailed "God," I will consider anyone a liar (at least a liar to themselves) if they claim to have discovered happiness outside of any religious perspective. If someone has an experience other than my own, it must be because they are deficient in some way; either they lack necessary faith, or they are being irrational or unempirical. It does not occur to me that we may both be equally empirical (and equally venturesome, hypothetically), but that they may have had different experiences than I have, and so have a different base from which to draw evidence; or, that they may have a way of connecting points of data that differs from my own, but which nonetheless does an equally adequate job of accounting for uniformities and anomalies in experience. 

Yes, we might refer to an "extreme" science believer, in a case where someone, for the sake of a particular science-inspired vision, puts aside other things that are of critical value to us as individuals or a society. There is an entire literary genre of scientific dystopia that explores such possibilities.  Some nazis, with their eugenic zeal, could be described as being of that ilk. Stalin, in the name of an ideal he believed to be thoroughly scientific, killed over 20 million people--focusing especially on those who dared to think differently. Pol Pot had a vision he thought was based on science, too, which resulted in the death of one-quarter of Cambodia's population perishing from overwork, hunger, or execution. 

I could name other examples, such as John Watson, in the field of psychology, who, out of a thoroughly scientific impulse reduced human behavior to only what could be observed--to the degree that thoughts and feelings were said not to have empirical validity. The entire history of psychology--from Ancient Greek and Thomistic-medieval, to observations from psychoanalysis--was considered to be of no value.

If I sound frustrated, it's because I am: frustrated with the language we use to talk about things like faith, religion, belief, reason, rationality, and science, because much of the time the language does not do justice to the complexity of describing actual people in the real world. Even more, though, I am frustrated with our readiness to assume that frameworks other than our own necessarily indicate deficiencies in those who hold them. Such a tendency does not foster conversation that leads to change, even in cases in which change is warranted. It is something I associate, for better or worse, with extremism.