Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Avoiding contentious labels

The last thing I'll say about being encyclopedic is: *avoid contentious labels*. When we slap a label on something, it often comes with a lot of baggage. When we say a group is "a cult", what are we saying? When we label something as a cult, we're basically saying "these are people with religious practices that aren't our own", or "that aren't mainstream", or "that look weird to us". That's what cult means, right? And it is inherently non-neutral, because it assumes some mainstream. It assumes that there are respectable religions, and then there are cults. That's a non-neutral, judgmental thing. The encyclopedia doesn't have a religious position or an anti-religious position. It just doesn't have any position at all on metaphysical subjects. And so nothing should be labeled a cult, in the modern sense. (But it's fine to use the ancient sense, and talk about "a cult of Hercules", or "a cult of the Roman Emperor".).

No one should be labeled a terrorist. As a person -- I stress this! -- as a person. *Acts* can be terrorist acts. There *are* acts of terrorism. And there is a definition for a terrorist act. But whether *an organization* is a *terrorist* organization or not is a matter of a lot of politics. One group's terrorists is another group's freedom fighters or holy warriors. And the encyclopedia shouldn't have a position about it. So we don't need to say "Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist", because we can say, factually and neutrally, "Osama Bin Laden masterminded and funded the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon".

However, we can *report* about the factual determinations of certain groups. We can, for example, say "the United States government has declared Boko Haram a terrorist organization". That's a fact. We can bring a *citation* for where the United States government has said that. That's different from saying in Wikipedia's Voice "Boko Haram is a terrorist organization". It's not the same. Likewise, "fundamentalist", "extremist", for the same reason. These words all assume a certain center, a certain mainstream, and then what isn't there is "an extremist". Where do you draw the line exactly? It's a question of subjective judgment, and therefore not an encyclopedic question!