In Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller's weekly article, parshas Yisro, she wrote the following:
(someone informed me that it's based on the Shaarei Teshuva from Rabbeinu Yonah)
(the whole article is worth reading, if you can get a hold of it- it's in Hamodia Magazine, January 23, 2008, page 20)


Ideally, we reject imperfection because of our love of Hashem and His truth. However, our fear of fanaticism is often caused by our exposure to warped perfectionism that comes from the need to feel validated and righteous rather than the need to serve Hashem humbly.
...
There are three reasons we must think very carefully before we deride what may seem extreme:
1. We will never try to improve ourselves if we mock others for being earnest.
2. We have to take responsibility for the people who will never move beyond their present level because they are afraid what others will say. At worst, they will lower
their standards in order to be accepted by a larger slice of the crowd.
3. If you love the King, the last thing you will do is make it loathsome to serve Him
with absolute devotion

Rabbi Nachman says that religious fanatcism is ridiculous first of all - follow what it says in halacha but dont be overly machmir - there r lots of minhagim that briskers had which r very fanatic but they have reasons for it - if being a fanatic doesnt come at the expense of others than its cool i would guess - the main problem with being a fanatic is that u forget that u r doing a mitzvah to serve and please hashem and instead u r pleasing urself on how machmir u can be - just follow what it says in halacha and have emuna that u r doing ti right
i saw the article on shabbos and didnt really read thru it
but her 3 reasons
u can wash netilas yadayim like a normal person and be earnest instead of doing it extremely cautiosly - Rav Noson(Rav Nachman's mian talmid)his father in law only ate bread for 40 years on shabbos cuz he was so machmir about netilas yadayim

Fanaticism is an ideologically induced atitude that strikes us as inflexible, gratuitous and/or conflictive. Fanaticism is like bad breath-it's always something other people have. Accusations of fanaticism are by definition subjective, since one person's fanaticism is another's ideology, belief system, etc.

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

-WC

A Rabbi that I know at Ner Yeshiva told me: "Everyone finds their own religious comfort zone and says -

TO THE LEFT THEY'RE LAZY, TO THE RIGHT THEY'RE CRAZY!!!"

FRUM:
FRUM = Fanatically Religious and Modern with U in the middle

Really?
Who does the Reform movement see as lazy?
Who do Shomer Emunim chassidim see as crazy?
 

Non religious people.
Everyone else?

9

that's centrist! Goldfish, whenever you come back to us (i miss you!), we know where you fit now!

Ah, see, a Rabbi told me "The position of too many Jews today is 'Anyone who's less religious than me is a heretic, and anyone who's more religious than me is a fanatic"

Which, well, is pretty much true according to my own observations

While subjectivity is inevitable in accusations of fanaticism, I believe a decent measuring stick is whether or not people will admit that their belief's do not track the truth when they in fact clearly do not.

I.e., they insist that they only believe what they do because it is true, when in fact they would believe whether or not it was true.