Who is an islamist

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Islamists seek to blend Islam and politics, but their movement is a very big tent. Thousands of supporters raise a poster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi as they celebrate in Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak 18 months ago, in Cairo, Aug. August 13, By Dan Murphy Staff writer. November 08, To top.

Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. Free word lists and quizzes from Cambridge. Tools to create your own word lists and quizzes. Word lists shared by our community of dictionary fans. Sign up now or Log in. Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English.

Click on the arrows to change the translation direction. Consider the various annotations of the Muslim sacred book, the Koran.

The book was originally written in classical Arabic, a rich, sophisticated language with tens of thousands of words and nuances, as well as flowing poetry.

Over eighty percent of the world's Muslims don't speak or read Arabic, so the book has to be translated, requiring the addition of numerous annotations. These annotations differ depending on the edition of the text. In the case of Islamists, these are the seeds of hatred.

I was raised in Turkey and read the Koran with Turkish annotations. Praying at an American mosque, I came across an English-language Koran printed in Saudi Arabia, the main purveyor of Islamist texts worldwide. In its man-made annotations, this Koran preached violence and hatred towards Jews, Christians, the West and Western institutions generally.

In Turkey, the Diyanet, the country's highest authority for the Muslim faith, prints Korans that are "halal," i. This institution is part of the secular government bureaucracy in Turkey, an ironic fact that is not without good consequences. The right Koran can firewall the minds of Muslims against Islamism, and in Turkey, Muslims have thus far won out against the Islamists. The future of many countries in the world, and the future of the West, will be determined by this battle between Muslims and Islamists.

Islamists want to convert Muslims to their hateful ideology. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. Statement of Purpose. What do we mean by Islamism? Though by no means exhaustive, the following serve as a useful map of the Islamist worldview: Arguably the core premise to which Islamists adhere is the notion of Islam as supreme and comprehensive — applicable to all spheres of life, which must be conducted in accordance with the divinely revealed truths of Islam, of which they claim to be the guardians.

Most famously this means a refusal to accept the possibility of secularism and the separation of religion and politics. Even so, they believe that Muslims should consider themselves, first and foremost, to be members of a de-territorialised, decontextualised, deculturated and globalised ummah.

The Islamist vision is informed by a distinctively teleological, millenarian view of history. Since that time, and particularly since the rise of western power in the C17th and C18th, the history of the Muslim peoples is deemed to be one of confusion, decline and fall.

Under this vision, Muslims became lax, abandoned the proper practices and beliefs of true religion — as revealed to them by the Prophet Muhammad — and in the process left themselves vulnerable to the blandishments and conspiracies of their enemies.

They thus became weak and were defeated and colonised by European imperialists, anxious to avenge the losses of the Crusades, and then by the US, which now holds nominally Muslim regimes in thrall to its power.

Islamists diagnose contemporary Muslim weakness as a product of the machinations of their enemies — namely, the western powers and their Zionist allies. Secularism and materialism are held to be the products of a great cultural invasion, designed specifically to diminish and destroy the Muslim faith. The ummah is presumed to be under constant attack from outside — principally from the West. And these narratives foster a culture of grievance and victimhood, which informs the Islamist worldview.

To achieve this, Islamists believe that they must be activist in pursuit of their goals. Equally, however, some Islamists have argued that physical force jihad is an integral part of the faith. They dismiss those who would render it a purely spiritual struggle.