Islam versus Islamism -- a distinction without a difference?

I no longer consider it my responsibility to determine who is a muslim. If someone claims to be muslim then I assume they support the socio-political ideology of islam which is imperialistic, based on apartheid, decrees human chattel slavery as a legal and valid economic activity, and degrades all women as breeding and fornicating beasts in a man's personal bordello.

If a person who claims to be muslim does not support these tenets then it is his/her responsibility to leave islam and no longer be a muslim.

There is no difference.
The only slight difference between the terms is one of ignorance and deceit. Islam is Islam, it is the merger of church and state and an unholy worship of Baal and Muhammad, the cult uber alles, Muhammad uber alles, Islam the only organising principle of man, chained to the worship of a moon idol. It is a cult, not a religion.

-The Koran is 35% anti-semitic - more than Mein Kampf, whose gibberish I have read.

-Over 500 verses in the Koran discuss how the Infidel will burn in hellfire - some in quite lurid detail.
Note that Infidel simply means a non-Moslem. It does not denote evil, satanic or unholy - these appellations are used to describe the infidel [along with unclean, stupid, hypocritical etc].

-Over 200 Koranic verses adjure war and violence against the
Infidel.

-Muhammad was hardly a man of peace but a political adventurer who married the existing worship of Baal with Judaic ideas of monotheism. Of course he had 15 sex slaves, he sex traded, he murdered, he warred, he jihaded, he plundered....

Islamism is simply a politically correct word of buffoonery to allow Ivy League grads to softly criticize the moon cult of Baal/Allah, without getting into trouble at their cocktail parties in the Hamptons.

Its users are wearing a badge of deception and ignorance not honor.

And that includes Moslems who are too dense and irrational to even criticize their own moon cult.

PI “stern” (star) The President of the Federal Criminal Office (BKA) contact form, Joerg Ziercke, has called on Muslims in Germany, clearly delimit by Islamist terrorism

It was “important that the Muslim organizations to distance themselves from terror and show: Islamism and Islam do not belong together,” said Ziercke the Passauer Neue Presse: “Muslims should distance themselves from terrorism” (just as alcohol & alcoholism, FB comment)

“If Muslims and their communities and organizations to point out publicly, this is an important signal.” In this way, a radicalization could be prevented.

http://newstime.co.nz/president-federal-criminal-office-joerg-ziercke-no-clue-of-islam.html

vs.

(video) “New York Times” besteller author “Son of Hamas” Mosab Hassan Yousef 0:10 “Allah is a terrorist … Muhammad is also a terroist”

and Robert Spencer:

(video) Video from: Threat of global jihad

05:00 Question of an journalist about Islam and Islamism

“Of course, there is no distinction between Islam and Islamism within Islam. Within the Islamic comunities. You can not find any people who say, “Oh no, I’m an Islamist” or “I am not an Islamist, I am a Muslim!”

This is a fictional construct “Islamism” that is created by Western analysts, because they couldn’t face the fact that these things are essential to Islam. And so they want to pretend that there are some distinction.

And certainly there are many peaceful Muslims, but they don’t have a theoretical construction of Islam behind them. They just not as Muslims as the other ones. Thank you!”

"JW -a Universal Freedom University of the Future".

What a wonderful scholarly conclusion regarding all ideological and grammatical enigmas that crafty men use, to present and confuse our today's indifferent public.

In-fact, this article makes it clear to understand for all gullible followers and paid advocates – what is the core testimony of a political Faith: called ISLAM.

Thank you Roberts and The Anti Jihadists.com.

Your engagement in this global rescue program is unquantifiable.

"Islamic supremacism" passes muster for me.

Instead of Islamists, I prefer the term doctrinaire Muslims. There are only two kinds of Muslims, doctrinaire and not so doctrinaire. The not so doctrinaire Muslims tend to be irrelevant bystanders and can never be counted on to challenge their doctrinaire brethren.

Actually, I don't think the term "Islamist" is all that bad, especially considering all the ridiculous euphamisms that have been bandied about in this conflict (War on "Terror"!? ). At least with this term, we don't get any modifier like "radical" or "extremist" added to the word "Islam". It's still not a perfect word because, as mentioned, it still suggests that an "Islamist" is somehow different than a mainstream Muslim---but maybe that difference is valid if we understand the term "Islamist" as simply a Muslim who truly understands Islam and takes it seriously.

Actually, I don't think the term "Islamist" is all that bad, especially considering all the ridiculous euphamisms that have been bandied about in this conflict (War on "Terror"!? ). At least with this term, we don't get any modifier like "radical" or "extremist" added to the word "Islam". It's still not a perfect word because, as mentioned, it still suggests that an "Islamist" is somehow different than a mainstream Muslim---but maybe that difference is valid if we understand the term "Islamist" as simply a Muslim who truly understands Islam and takes it seriously.

I label Moslems who reject onerous aspects of their faith such as the Jihad imperative as MINOS (Moslems-in-name-only)

"All of this discussion of 'Islamism' naturally begs the question: what is the difference between it and Islam? Or is there any appreciable difference between the two?

I my oppinion there is a qualitative difference between Islam and Islamism that we should be aware of, because if you do not know your enemy you cannot fight him effectively.

Islamism is a modern political and revolutionary version of Islam. Islamism definitely has a new element in it. Modern radical Islamism and twentieth-century Western totalitarian movements are not simply akin, moving in parallel to each other. There was a good deal of ideological cross-pollination, and they had real working connections. This is not news in respect to Nazism and Hitler's mufti, Amin al-Husayni. In fact, Qutb said all liberation movements were welcome to his revolution: "The Islamic doctrine adopts all struggelers of liberation in the world and supports them in every place."

Like twentieth-century Western ideologies, Islamism places the burden of salvation upon politics, a total politics that, only through its control every aspect of life, can bring about their version of God's kingdom on earth. Islamism is not a religion in the traditional sense. Most religions, in fact all monotheistic ones, put before man a revelation from God that is similar in certain essential aspects. The revelation contains a moral code by which man is expected to live if he wishes to achieve eternal life in paradise. Paradise is located in the hereafter - never on this earth. So is the hell to which man will be sent if he is disobedient.

Islamism is an ideology in the classic sense in that it offers, or rather insists upon, an alternative “reality” - one that collapses the separate realms of the divine and the human, and arrogates to itself the means to achieve perfect justice here in this world or, as Qutb said, “to abolish all injustice from the earth.” This notion of the inner perfectibility of history – the achievement of perfect justice here – is the very heart of ideology, whether sacred or profane. It places alongside reality its false version and insists that reality conform to its demands. Its adherents live in the magical world of this second reality and obey its laws. They may seem to live and move in the realm of the real world, but they are already transposed into the second false reality. When they behave according to its laws – such as in slaughtering innocent people without remorse – others are surprised and disturbed because they do not know the contours of this second reality, which has just been so shockingly imposed on them.

Jessica Stern, the author of “Terror in the name of God”, reflected the puzzlement that initially strikes almost everyone encountering Islamist terrorism until they come to understand its ideology as a pseudoreligion rather rather than as a political movement. She writes:

“I have some to see that apocalyptic violence intended to 'cleanse' the world of 'impurities' can create a transcendent state. All the terrorist groups examined in this book believe – or at least started out believing – that they are creating a more perfect world. From their perspective, they are purifying the world of injustice, cruelty, and all that is anti-human. When I began this project, I could not understand why the killers I met seemed spiritually intoxicated. Now, I think I understand. They seem that way because they are.”

The joint commissioner of the Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria, said of the captured terrorist Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving perpetrator of the 2008 mass murder in Mumbai, India, “He was led to believe that he was doing something holy.”

With scathing sarcasm, Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Tunisian reformist, said of Islamist terrorists, “No criminal is more despicable than one who not only fails to feel any guilt after (committing) his crime, but also harbors the illusion that this (crime) will bring him … divine reward. This conversion of bad into good not only spares him guilt, but also turns an unhappy person into a happy soul.”

Thus, terrorism is not simply terror – some people doing terrible things on the spur of the of the moment. It is murder advanced to the level of a MORAL principle, which is then institutionalized in a organization – a cell, a party, or a state – as its animating principle. It is the rationalization that allows, as Meddeb said, “the conversion of bad onto good”, on which the organization is based. In order to act, terrorists must firmly believe that their violence is moral or “holy”, that it will achieve some higher good. Therefore, the very first thing one must understand is the ideology incarnated in the terrorist organization that allows terrorists to do this; it is the source of their moral legitimacy. Without it, they or their organization cannot exists. It is the “ism” in terrorism. The case of the radical IslamISM, already mentioned, the trinity of thinkers behind the ideology is Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Bana, and Maulana Maududi.

(Quoted from Robert R. Reillys "The Closing of the Muslim Mind", 2010, Chapter 8, "The Sources of Islamism").

I think Robert Spencer is wrong when he claims that Islam and Islamism is one and the same:

“The common distinction drawn between “Islam” and “Islamism”, which is accepted without question by the wast majority of public policy analysts, opinion makers, lawmakers, and diplomats, rests on the idea that there is a core, a kernel, or perhaps an original form of Islam that did not teach warfare against non-Muslims; “Islamism” is widely reputed to be a Muslim imitation of fascism and communism that has little or nothing to do with the actual teachings of Islam”.

(Quoted from Robert Spenser’s “The Truth about Muhammad”, 2006, p.6).

There is no peaceful core in orthodox Islam and that is exactly the explanation why Islam could adopt new totalitarian ideas from Nazism and Leninism and create Islamism, instead of adopting ideas about equality from democracy and the rule of law.

Another deceit--so readily accepted as fact--is the notion of 'radical Islam' and 'extremism'.

Given that Muslims believe that every word of the Qur'an is God's very own, and that every word of that idiotic text applies to every Muslim--everywhere--there is no such thing as 'radical Islam', and the 'extremism' so many Muslims claim to abhor is actually the literalism that Islam actually expects of its every slave.

Despite their best efforts, the main disappointment for Muslims today is the fear that they will not witness the imposition of the shari'a upon the rest of us in their lifetimes.

2012 election motto: "It's Islam stupid!"
It's Islam, it's Muhammad, period.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/12/perfect-man-of-islam.html

I wrote a piece titled "CALLING ISLAM "ISLAM" that you can find here http://bit.ly/nfpkqC

Here's the opening:

Western intellectuals and commentators refer to the enemy's ideology as:

"Islamic Fundamentalism", "Islamic Extremism", "Totalitarian Islam", "Islamofascism", "Political Islam", "Militant Islam", "Bin Ladenism", "Islamonazism", "Radical Islam", "Islamism", etc....

The enemy calls it "Islam".

Imagine, if during past wars, we used terms such as "Radical Nazism", "Extremist Shinto" and "Militant Communism"......

I also drew an accompanying graphic at the end of the piece that says it as succinctly as I can.

The difference between Islam and Islamism is 3 letters.

I think that the point of those expressions is to leave a little wiggle room for mohammedans who do not subscribe to the whole supremacist imperialist doctrine to say ... well, that's not MY islam.

I don't think any attempt is made to draw a clear and meaningful distinction between doctrines. Otherwise some sensible definition of alternative doctrines would have emerged and been placed before the public eye by now.

It's just a personal gesture intended to show some sort of positive inclination toward ordinary mohammedans not directly involved in jihad.

It is also intended to give some wiggle room to those that wish to oppose jihad and/or sharia without having to say "I'm against Islam".

It's all about personal relationships, attitudes, emotions and perceptions. It doesn't, in my view have much to do with describing objective realities.

Whether or not all that is worth doing is a different question.

I would like to see someone who likes the term islamism come out with a clear definition of what that is and how it differs from islam as such. Daniel Pipes perhaps. But I don't think one is forthcoming. I doubt that it is possible -- because the distinction has no objectively demonstrable cannonical literary basis.

Even without delving into what is or is not islam, just empirically speaking, one can see:
--thousands of teachers, preachers and publications saying THIS benign stuff over here is the real islam, and
--thousands of other teachers, preachers and publications saying THIS warlike stuff over here is the real islam

That is sufficient to say that there IS a hostile doctrine out there called islam, because it IS. There IS a hostile doctrine out there. And its adherents call it islam. Period. Our opinions don't matter very much.

To the extent that the literary cannonical base is identical in both cases, and that is the only measurable objective reality one can point to, there is not much point in outsiders trying to resolve the puzzle, if indeed it is a puzzle.

It's not as though there were only 1 hostile verse in the cannon and half of the mohammedan community honored it literally and the other half called it an allegory. Then we could draw a real distinction between say, the 9:5'ers and everybody else. And we could even get their experts and preachers to bear witness and explain.

It is for those inside the mohammedan community, the believers to delineate what the doctrines are and what they should be called. And to spell it out nice and clear.

Certainly the specific differentiators of different churches, schools and sects of all the other religions in the world can do so.

For outsiders ... well, there IS a hostile doctrine out there that it's adherents call islam. And there is a real cannonical literary basis to support their assertion. Good, bad or indifferent, it's real.

Objectively, that's all we've really got to go on.

Why do Muslims deny Mohamed in an effortto be accepted by kafirs? Mohamed was a lying, looting, raping, murdering pedophile and by Allah, that's the way Muslims are supposed to be. Forget what kafirs want. Tell them you want to be just like Mo!

Then even the most dense of libtards might understand that Muslims and civilization are incompatible.

I agree, there is no difference, all muslims are time bombs waiting to go off, usually at the dictate of the local imam.

make that "ticking time bombs".....

In the way of seconding the conclusions of this article, I left this comment on a Middle East Forum article on “Muslim Radicalization”:

http://www.meforum.org/3030/muslim-radicalization

As important as it may be to draw distinctions between Islam and “radical” Islam (that is, between Wahhabist, “pure” Islam and the allegedly “moderate” version as practiced, say, by proprietors of 7/11 convenience stores),the religion is still at root a prescription for totalitarianism. Regardless of the version, it requires the submission of one’s mind, of one’s volitional consciousness, to arbitrary and utterly irrational authority. One may quibble between the differences between applications of the ideology, and because the religion makes no distinction between its “ethical” imperatives and what an individual Muslim must do to conform to them, that is, to advance Islam at every chance, even in Western societies, it is an ideology, and not just a set of principals which one may hold privately and not be compelled to impose it on others. Muslims are not the Amish.

Moreover, and Ibrahim introduces but does not pursue the point, there can be no such thing as a “secular” Islam, only half-breed versions of it such as what governed Egypt under Hosni Mubarak until his Western-instigated downfall, or in Turkey, which is finally succumbing to its Islamic roots. In such a compromise between Islam and eclectic Western secular elements, the more consistent ideology will ultimately triumph, and in Egypt’s and Turkey’s instances, Islam was the more consistent or “pure” ideology. Saudi Arabia and Iran are examples of two “hostile” versions of Islam, but each is equally inimical to reason, rationality, and freedom. Sunni and Shiite brands of Islam are simply two ends of the same ideological club.

Finally, Ibrahim also touches on a subject I have not seen advanced before by any articulate “counter-jihadist,” the alleged Christian roots of Western culture.

“Yet we continue to hear Western politicians casually talking about ‘de-radicalizing’ Muslims. This is no different than, say, Chinese politicians casually talking about ‘de-radicalizing’—de-Westernizing—Western peoples, so that they can stop thinking and acting in a distinctly Western way.”

Very vocal conservative politicians, most prominently most current Republican candidates for president, contend that Western civilization and culture are based on Christian moral tenets – Christ’s teachings, the Bible, and so on – and make that claim in the face of the fact that everything we have that advances human happiness is based on reason and rationality, and not on another version of mysticism. What we do have, however, is the “secular “version of the Judeo-Christian ethic and this has governed our politics for about one and a half centuries, with disastrous results. Sacrifice, selflessness, “volunteerism, “the notion of “giving back” to society if one is extraordinarily successful in the material realm – call it the Christian version of Islam’s zakat, or welfare tax – indeed, the whole structure of taxation and regulation that continues to stall and skew a vigorous economy, is founded on secular Christian ethics.

As Ayn Rand pointed out decades ago, a “benign” welfare state, if not checked and opposed and dismantled, will ultimately and from necessity lead to totalitarianism – which is what we face today under Obama and the Republicans. As the welfare state established by Bismarck necessarily led to Nazi Germany, the welfare state advocated by the Progressives and legislated by a succession of presidents and Congresses will lead to the same consequence.

Yes, it would be absurd for Chinese politicians to talk about “de-radicalizing” Western peoples. “Western peoples” cannot be both “Western “and “non-Western” at the same time. More absurd is to hear Christian politicians discuss “de-radicalizing” Muslims or even Islam itself. They cannot make any credible headway in arguing against “radical” Islam before they recognize that Islam is by its nature “radical “and then repudiate their own ethics of altruism, selflessness, living for others, and submitting to the authority of Christ, God, and the Bible. Why make a distinction between Mohammad, Allah, and the Koran and Christ, God and the Bible when they are all attributes of the same species of mysticism? What was it that Rand’s arch-villain in “The Fountainhead,” Ellsworth Toohey, said about today’s moral conflict: Fight the system that destroys the individual with the system that destroys the individual? Christianity, which was severed for the longest time from secular, individual rights-recognizing politics, is simply a rival system of Islam’s. Virtually its only redeeming feature is its stress on personal salvation, something that is completely absent in Islam. The better known enemies of Islam employ the irrational to combat the irrational.

If Islam is making any progress in the West, it is because, as I note in my Post 9/11 Retrospective article, it is riding on the coattails of Western statism, a statism based on Christian ethics, an ethics not in any fundamental sense dissimilar from Islam’s. Why disparage Islamists who boast of wanting to replace the Constitution with Sharia law, when Christian “extremists “wish to replace it with the Bible? If Western civilization is to be saved, its defenders must be consistent in their argumentation and reject any version of anti-reason.

Another way of putting it is: You can't have your own set of Great Ghosts and Grungy Goblins and object to another's at the same time. Because then you've reduced the argument to, "My Ghost is better than your Ghost." And adding "Nyah!" and sticking out one's tongue.

To "The Anti-Jihadist".
Thanks for the link. As one of those who does like the term "Islamist" let me try to offer a defence.

First, I concede that by my definition, Mohammad was an Islamist, and the Quran is Islamist.
Also Saudi Arabia and all sharia states are Islamist.
I agree that liberal tolerant Muslims are not really following the example of Mohammad.
So why not call tolerant Islam some sort of heresy, and use "Islam" for the Islam that follows Mohammad?

Part of the reason is strategic. We need a name for tolerant Islam, because it does exist, and in the West at least it is the majority. I suggest calling it "Islam", and saving "Islamism" for those who want to impose sharia. To call the latter "Islam" and the former a heresy may make "theological" sense, but seems to be pretty much taking the world view of the jihadists.

Maybe where we differ is that I am unimpressed by intolerant Islam and jihadism being "theologically" sound. Religions don't have to make sense. (In my view, no religion makes sense.) Muslims can (in theory, and many do in practice) invent their own tolerant, peaceful Islam, no matter what their violent, intolerant founder said.

Religions can move on from their founders. Jews don't follow the violent intolerant example of Moses, but we don't call liberal tolerant Judaism a "heresy". Christians still put the Old Testament in their Bible, but they don't follow its teachings. Christians don't even follow St.Paul's teaching (e.g. on women or slaves). Catholicism claims continuity with the medieval Popes, but doesn't follow their teaching (e.g. on burning heretics). Religions evolve over time and can detach from their founders. Islam could detach from Mohammad too. If there are enough tolerant Muslims who don't follow Mohammad's example, they earn the right to label their religion "Islam". We should encourage them, not discourage them.

I agree with Andy McCarthy, who says:
"I reluctantly use the term "Islamist" rather than "Islam" because I believe there are hundreds of millions of Muslims (somewhere between a third to a half of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims) who do not want to live under sharia, and who want religion to be a private matter, separated from public life. It is baffling to me why these people are Muslims since, as I understand Islam, (a) sharia is a basic element, and (b) Islam rejects the separation of mosque and state. But I'm not a Muslim, so that is not for me to say. I think we have to encourage the non-sharia Muslims and give them space to try to reform their religion, so I believe it's worth labeling the sharia seekers "Islamists" in order to sort them out. But I admit being very conflicted about it because I also concede that the Islamists have the more coherent (and scary) construction of Islam."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/196184/gitmo-bar-pro-islamist-andrew-c-mccarthy

I think Robert Spencer and others at Jihad Watch don't like the term "Islamist" because it suggests that violent, pro-sharia Islam is a heresy, and a deviation from the founder. But this is not what the term is meant to imply at all. The term is an attempt to encourage an Islam that is different to the founder.

Mark Humphrys

If and when someone can pro-actively identify, not reactively after the bomb goes off, a distinction between a Muslim and an Islamist, I might consider engaging in this futile exercise.

If millions of Muslims worldwide do not want to be ruled by Shariah, then they have essentially cast off the foundation of their ideology to the point where they are no longer Muslims, yet may remain culturally Arabic.

It's pointless. Islam is a totalitarian, subversive ideology that shares a common goal, whether by demographics or overt violence.

End of story...

If and when someone can pro-actively identify, not reactively after the bomb goes off, a distinction between a Muslim and an Islamist, I might consider engaging in this futile exercise.

If millions of Muslims worldwide do not want to be ruled by Shariah, then they have essentially cast off the foundation of their ideology to the point where they are no longer Muslims, yet may remain culturally Arabic.

It's pointless. Islam is a totalitarian, subversive ideology that shares a common goal, whether by demographics or overt violence.

End of story...