What if 'Islamic State' didn't exist?

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-300914.html



What if 'Islamic State' didn't exist?
By Ramzy Baroud
Sep 30, '14

What if the so-called Islamic State (IS) didn't exist? In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines.

Many in the Western and Arab media use the reference "Islamist" to brand any movement, whether it be political, militant or even charity-focused. If it is dominated by men with beards or women with headscarves that make references to the Holy Koran and Islam as the motivator behind their ideas, violent tactics or even good deeds, then the word "Islamist" is the language of choice.

According to this overbearing logic, a Malaysia-based charity can be as "Islamist" as the militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria. When the term "Islamist" was first introduced to the debate on Islam and politics, it carried mostly intellectual connotations. Even some "Islamists" used it in reference to their political thought. Now, it can be molded to mean many things.

This is not the only convenient term that is being tossed around so deliberately in the discourse pertaining to Islam and politics. Many are already familiar with how the term "terrorism" manifested itself in the myriad of ways that fit any country's national or foreign policy agenda - from the former US president George W Bush to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[merrily]

1. Well, we always referred to

Italian, Irish and Jewish mobsters who were strong here during the Forties, Fifties and Sixties as Catholicists and Jewists, didn't we?