Islamist
From Wikinfo
The English language word Islamist has an ambiguous meaning, imposed by many attempts to define it for use in politics, exactly as has happened with the term jihad, an Arabic word important in Islam itself. Both words are used in quite different ways to describe different activities so as to claim that their view of the word or process is right. A sympathetic and anti-totalitarian point of view requires acknowledging both uses of the term, according this is a rather complex disambiguation page.
Implications
- As with "communist" it might imply that there is an ideology, "communism" that all adherents share, which is intent on violent political domination of all others. In this interpretation, to call someone or something Islamist is to accuse it of Islamism - a term invented by Americans and Israelis in the 1980s to describe a variant of terrorism.
- However, as with "scientist", to be Islamist can imply that there is a view in which Islam, like science, is a method by which to view ethics and morals so as to make objectively correct decisions - typically a form of consensus decision making. This is not tied to any particular view of how one might apply or impose the decisions, which might include democracy or other traditions. In this view, to claim an Islamist is guilty or part of Islamism is like claiming a scientist is always guilty or part of scientism.
Most Islamists...
For the vast majority of people who would describe themselves openly as Islamist, the broader and more inclusive definition applies. There are large democratic parties in Turkey and Indonesia especially that call themselves by this name, and throughout the Muslim world it is common to describe countries and parties and groups as Islamist. What these groups share is a broader understanding of Islam as a political movement and many espouse liberal Islam and modern Islamic philosophy. By no means do they share most attributes of the so-called Islamism: claiming that they do is often racism, plain and simple.
For example, at Wikipedia, various proponents of Zionism and American Exceptionalism often redirect this word Islamist to their article on Islamism, ignoring and slandering the vast majority of claimed Islamists, to whom the extremist concepts described there are unfamiliar, violent and unreasonable.
