Islamism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islamism (Islam+-ism; Arabic: إسلام سياسي‎ Islām siyāsī, “Political Islam”, or الإسلامية al-Islāmīyah) is a set of ideologies holding that “Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life”.^[1] Islamism is a controversial neologism, and definitions of it sometimes vary (see below). Leading Islamist thinkers emphasize the implementation of Sharia (Islamic law); of pan-Islamic political unity; and of the elimination of non-Muslim, particularly Western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influences in the Muslim world, which they believe to be incompatible with Islam.^[2] Some observers suggest Islamism’s tenets are less strict, and can be defined as a form of identity politics or “support for [Muslim] identity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, [and] revitalization of the community”.^[3]

Many of those described as “Islamists” oppose the use of the term, and claim that their political beliefs and goals are simply an expression of Islamic religious belief. Similarly, some experts favor the term activist Islam,^[4][5] or political Islam,^[6] instead. Also sometimes the term militant Islam is equated with the term Islamism.^[7] Following the Arab Spring professor Olivier Roy of the European University Institute in an article in Foreign Policy has described political Islam as “increasingly interdependent” with democracy, such that “neither can now survive without the other”…^[8]

I see and hear this neologism, newly used term, used with increasing frequency in the corporate media…in proper Orwellian tradition.  As admitted above by Wikipedia the definition is variable.  And yet Wikipedia goes on to describe who leading Islamist thinkers are and what they think.  So why use a word with an amorphous definition, and how can you say who the Islamists are and what they think,  if the definition is variable?  Could usage of the term be intended to confuse and deceive?  What are the terms for Christians and Jews who advocate political Christianity or political Judaism?   THINK about it.