Jackson! Pool!
"I presume you would see the injusitice in identifying an IRA bomber as 'Catholic' or 'Christian', it's the same story here."
Your analogy would be correct had I used the word "Muslim", but I did not! I agree that the word "Islamist" is at present likely to be confused with Muslims in general. Unfortunately, I know of no other word to describe that precise political philosophy arising from Islam! Do you?
Moreover, I thought the newspaper articles - from which I learned the word - were excellent! I can't access any of those articles right now so I'll repost Pagan/Hepcat's letter to the editor on the subject of Islamism and religious fundamentalism in general:
"I read, with disgust, Jerry Falwell's comments in which he sought to partially blame "pagans...and all those who have tried to secularize America" for last week's cataclysm. Falwell actually seeks to create a society fundamentally similar to that envisaged by the Islamists, a fundamentalist Christian one compared to a fundamentalist Muslim one. He, of course, fails to see the irony.
There is, however, yet a deeper irony. An examination of the motives of the plane hijackers reveals that Falwell is on one level correct. Islamists seek jihad against the West for two closely related reasons:
1. The first is that they are bewildered by the material prosperity of the Western "infidels" while they, loyal servants of Allah, are dirt poor. The Islamists fail to see that it is precisely their devotion to their creed which has kept the Muslim world economically and scientifically backward for centuries. The full flowering of human creativity can come only from minds unencumbered by the strictures of inflexible religious dogma. This dichotomy between the West's prosperity and their own poverty gives rise to the hate that causes the Islamists to attack the West and its symbols of prosperity. (If we can't have it, then neither can you!) In other words, it is the politics of envy carried through to its final extreme. Since the United States epitomizes a modern secular society, the brunt of this envy is borne by the U.S.
2. The second reason is that the Islamists very rightly fear that the prosperity of the "decadent" West will undermine the appeal of their own fundamentalist dogma to fellow Muslims. The Islamists fear that their own populace will be "corrupted" by the lure of the economic prosperity attainable by unfettered minds in free markets. The Islamists therefore feel compelled to at least destroy these symbols of the West's prosperity that they themselves can never create.
The irony is that the Islamists would not find the glittering symbols of economic success to attack if the West was indeed ruled by the principles Falwell (and Michael Coren) espouses. The economic success of the West has been precisely the product of the free and secular minds that Falwell and his ilk would stifle!"
Pagan
17 September 2001
