A Few Brief Thoughts on Islamism

Islam is a religion and separable from the political doctrine of Islamism.

Islamists want to gain state power through violence and use it to transform their societies into theocracies. There is no intelligible distinction between Islamists and militant Islamists. Some Islamists in some circumstances—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—are not now using violence. Thatchoice is pragmatic not principled.

Islamists support militant Islamists and generally do everything possible to strengthen them. Today’s Islamists are—especially if U.S. policy doesn’t help block them and discourage them—tomorrow’s militant Islamists.

Medieval Islam was tolerant and open to other ideas achieved the highest level of civilization, prosperity, and even power. Islamists prefer the early period of Islam as more religiously pure and as a time of the great conquests. Islamists suppress more moderate Koranic verses and Islamic ideas. Many accepted Muslim texts do not limit jihad to being defensive. Jihad is to expand the lands ruled by Islam. What is most important is not the “true” nature of Islam—religion of peace or religion of aggression—but the way Muslims interpret Islam today.

Islamists misuse Islam. A vexing question is what policy should be where Islamist totalitarian movements take power without violence. Will violence come afterward? The Iranian revolution in 1978 wasn’t massively violent either. America supported enabled it. Repeating this policy in the Arabic-speaking world may arguably bring catastrophe beyond the reckoning of policymakers.