An “Islamist” is generally a proponent of political Islam. I generally tend not to use the word, because many draw a distinction between “Islamic” and “Islamist,” implying (and sometimes asserting outright) that political Islam is a twisting and hijacking of the original, presumably non-political, non-supremacist Islamic religion. Since that is a false distinction, I shy away from the word. But in this case it is hard to know what to call Ghannouchi. This article suggests that Ghannouchi is anti-Sharia but is nonetheless an Islamist; this is a distinction that I cannot recall being made before, and I’m not sure what it means. Does the AFP author know what it meant when he or she wrote it? Did Ghannouchi really mean that he opposed the implementation of Sharia in Tunisia today? All open questions at this point.