“When Tareq Oubrou, the most famous media imam in France, explains that he does not draw any distinction between Islam and Islamism: ‘Islamism is an Islam in motion…’”
The distinction between Islamism and Islam is taken for granted everywhere in the West, and some people get quite self-righteous about it, bragging that they make this distinction while others, the racists and bigots and “Islamophobes,” don’t have the wit or generosity or moral capacity to do so. Such people are as contemptible as they are legion, as “Islamism” is a Western construct that corresponds to nothing in Islamic scripture, theology, or law.
The word does, however, actually have some utility, when the word “Islamism” is used to refer to political Islam in particular. Yet it is all too often used to create the illusion that political Islam is somehow distinct from and exists as a perversion of genuine Islam, which is as benign and cuddly as the day is long. Because this is false and dangerously misleading, I generally shy away from using the word.
(Thanks to Medforth.)
