In the 19th century, European orientalists used the term Islamism to describe the study of Islam or the religion itself, much like Buddhism or Hinduism.7 It was a neutral academic label, not a political one. By the early 20th century, Western scholars and administrators started using Islamism to describe what they saw as a politicized form of Islam—essentially, as we discussed earlier, groups seeking to reestablish the Caliphate.
This was the first step in a deliberate redefinition: casting Islam’s political ambitions as a modern, aberrant strain rather than an intrinsic feature. By the mid-20th century, with the rise of figures like Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamism was fully recast as a distinct ideology, a supposed perversion of Islam that sought to impose Sharia and establish Islamic governance. This redefinition peaked after 9/11, when the West’s fear of being labeled Islamophobic reached fever pitch. Media and politicians leaned hard into the Islam-versus-Islamism narrative, insisting that Islamism was a political ideology divorced from the “spiritual” essence of Islam.
For nearly two decades, I lived as a Muslim. I never even heard the term Islamism until I began interacting with Western academics and media. To a Muslim living by the Qur’an and Sunnah, it is meaningless. No serious Islamic scholar teaches that there is a separate category of Muslim called an Islamist. There is only the Muslim who obeys Allah and His Messenger, and the Muslim who fails to do so.
In other words, the so-called Islamist is simply the Muslim who takes the religion seriously—who doesn’t pick and choose, who applies Islam to every part of life. A nominal Christian can reject biblical commands on sexuality, the exclusivity of Christ, or the authority of Scripture and still be recognized by other Christians as part of the faith. A Jew can reject the divine origin of the Torah, or the authority of the Talmud, and still be embraced in Jewish community. There is theological space for pluralism.
Islam allows no such luxury. The Qur’an is the literal, eternal word of Allah. Muhammad is the perfect example for all mankind until the end of time. The Hadiths are binding. To reject them is to leave Islam. Even Qur’anists, the tiny minority who accept only the Qur’an and reject the Hadiths, are considered apostates by the rest of the Muslim world. This unity on the fundamentals is why the “moderate Muslim” vs. “Islamist” binary is so misleading. The various sects—Sunni, Shia, Ibadi—may differ on who should have succeeded Muhammad or how certain rituals are performed, but they do not differ on the necessity of Sharia, the authority of the Qur’an, the obligation of jihad, or the supremacy of Islam over all other systems. Those are the points that define Islamism in Western parlance, and they are also the points that define Islam itself.
The West, however, needed the term. The atrocities of al-Qaeda and ISIS were so graphic, so impossible to sanitize, that Western apologists for Islam had to come up with a way to condemn the acts without condemning the theology that inspired them. Thus, Islamism became the escape hatch—a way to say, “This isn’t Islam, it’s a radical political movement.” And once that framing took hold, Islam itself was absolved.
But by pretending that Islamism is the problem, the West blinds itself to the real source of the threat. It ends up banning groups while leaving the ideology that produces them untouched. It condemns the bombings while protecting the scripture that commands them. It fights the symptoms while shielding the disease. And in doing so, it does Muslims no favors. You cannot reform what you refuse to diagnose. If you keep telling Muslims that Islam is peaceful and that only Islamism is the problem, they will never feel the need to examine the doctrines that make Islamism inevitable.
Islam, as we have seen, is political by nature. It always has been. If an Islamist is defined as someone who seeks to implement Islam as a political system, then Muhammad himself was the first Islamist, and every devout Muslim is commanded to follow his example. The distinction between Islam and Islamism collapses under even the most basic doctrinal test. Islamism is simply Islam with no brakes. It is Islam applied.
You only need to accept the Qur’an and Sunnah as the ultimate standard for all human life to become what is called an Islamist. The first Islamist was Muhammad. Every Muslim who seeks to follow him fully—whether by preaching, lobbying, building parallel societies, or waging armed jihad—is walking the same path. The only difference between the “Islamist” and the “Muslim” is the degree to which they have the freedom, power, and will to act on what they believe.
That’s why the West’s linguistic firewall between Islam and Islamism is not only false but dangerous. It gives cover to those who share the ideology but have not yet, or cannot yet, translate it into force. By insisting that Islam is innocent and only Islamism is the problem, the West has built a wall of moral immunity around the doctrine itself. This absolves Muslims of confronting the supremacist elements in their faith, because the West has already declared those elements to be alien to Islam.
The result is a closed loop: every jihadist act is reframed as “not true Islam”—and therefore Islam requires no reform.
You might ask: What’s the problem, then? Even if this modern, sanitized version of Islam isn’t fully rooted in theology, hasn’t it at least established itself as a peaceful, practical alternative? Isn’t that a step forward?
The answer is no. Not even close. In fact, it’s worse than useless; it’s dangerous. When a Muslim embraces this rebranded Islam while insisting that it is the true Islam, he becomes an unwitting shield for the very sources—the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the classical jurisprudence—that Islamic terrorists openly cite as their mandate. He doesn’t dismantle the machinery that produces jihad; he defends it.
By declaring, “This is Islam, and it is peaceful,” he grants those same sacred texts an unearned immunity from criticism. In doing so, he fortifies the soil from which every so-called Islamist movement grows.
If Muslims openly admitted that their modernized version requires modifying, reinterpreting, or discarding major parts of the original tradition, that would be progress. It would at least create an honest distinction between the historical faith and the moral reforms necessary to live in a pluralistic society. But that’s not what’s happening.
That’s why the world still struggles to identify—let alone confront—the real power source behind global jihad. The followers of this fabricated Islam refuse to allow serious questions about the texts themselves, because such questions would expose that their “peaceful Islam” is only possible by rejecting core tenets of the faith. As long as the mask is mistaken for the face, the ideology that fuels the violence remains sacred, untouchable, and ready to be activated by anyone willing to remove the mask.
In this way, the so-called moderates become the unintentional bodyguards of the very system they claim to oppose. — Islam, Israel and the West by Danny Burmawi (2025, Kindle Edition, the section 'Islam vs. Islamism' is taken from chapter 4. Used with Permission)