The Right to Say “Islamist” is a Religious Freedom Issue

Three reasons why, plus a bonus interview.

A UK-based Muslim police organization proposes dropping the term “Islamist terrorism” and “jihadis.” The proposal offers alternative language including “faith-claimed terrorism,” “terrorists abusing religious motivations,” and “adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology,” when describing attacks by those who identify as Muslims.

Pushing aside the narrative that scrubbing the word Islamism would make it vastly more difficult to challenge lawful Islamism, there are three other significant detriments in softening the language to be more palatable to those for whom truth is uncomfortable.

Reason 1: Deleting “Islamist” is a Win for Cancel Culture and a Loss for Counter-Extremism Professionals

The civilizational war foretold by prophets of American political science includes a significant stepping stone that requires Western civilizational to become a self-destructive ouroboros that softens the landscape for cultural domination by foreign ideologies antithetical to American values. We are in an ideological war, which we’re losing in part to cancel culture.

The speech constraints imposed by cancel culture — or even a culture of extreme aggression toward dissenting opinions — opens up the West to far more vulnerabilities than simply faith-based terror. However, given that we’re no less involved in a war against a theology that has been distorted from source material, for the sake of staying focused we’re looking specifically at how language restrictions disorient dialogue and how that disorientation is oppressive to Muslims.

While calling for “Islamist” to be removed is not a total cancellation of the term itself as it can still be used in other circles, it is a policy-based shape-shifting of reality that funnels open exploration into a narrow margin. When it comes to giving law enforcement, analysts, and others in the field the tools they need to do their job effectively, being able to use specific language is a critical first tool.

In a 2016 Federalist article titled “What World War II Can Teach Us About Islamic Terror,” I pointed out that accurately naming a problem is the single most important step in the navigating the psychological landscape in the ideological war. Vigilance in favor of accurate language use is key to driving policy-based solutions and developing effective initiatives to counter or prevent violent extremism. Having the right to use the term “Islamist” is more than just about policy, though.

Reason 2: Accurate Language is the Bedrock of Effective Problem Solving

Naming a thing is an incredibly powerful act that grants dominion. Whether it’s the naming of animals in the Book of Genesis, the power that comes with knowledge of a name in the Old Testament or even awareness of a thing through knowing its name, identification is instrumental to understanding. Naming the problem is at the bedrock of creating a new spiritual and cultural engine that can help humanity move forward in unlocking its potential. How a civilization talks about itself is intensely relevant in moving the needle toward meaningful change. Right now, we’re witnessing what a failure to speak truthfully— a failure to move beyond the paradigm of race — has done to society.

In the years since that Federalist article, society has drifted further way from a visible shoreline that could anchor us in a new understanding of a very old problem: Sanctioned violent extremism within Islam. Instead of reimagining our identity as transcending a fixed chaotic past, the first generation of the 21st century is regressing into a culture of blasphemy.

The push from one group or another, time and time again, for censoring language is a symptom of a broken identity construct hinged on inherited identity and not what a human life is still free to imagine. Our inherited identity is one notch on a vast timeline across human development. We are not moored to our past. We have the ability to sail to an ever expanding horizon by shifting our perspective from one of fixed identity to embracing that the story of being and human belonging is one we are still writing.

When people ask me why I still identify as Muslim, this is why. Though the Quran states that our religion is complete, the Quran is itself a labyrinth and Islamic culture is rich with a legacy of dialogue and debate that welcomes us to challenge the greatest thinkers. If we’re to engage with the greatest minds past or present, how can we be limited to how we engage in that expression. It is not reasonable to have our tongues shaped so that our language appeases a small minority of present-day Muslims driven through fear-based thinking and threatened by expansive dialogue.

Reason 3: Limiting Language is Hostile to Muslim Civil Rights

It’s the right of every Muslim to have a conversation on Islamism, jihadists, and theocratic terrorism without infringement as long as that language isn’t advocating belligerent violence or censorship. Alienating truthful language to beyond the pale not only sanctions oppressive policies against Muslims’ right to practice Islam — whether that’s as private citizens or government employees — it’s also an oppressive maneuver against freedom of religion. While the current call to eradicate “Islamist” is within the policy sphere, government sector is a critical landscape that impacts and informs other spheres of society. As we also know from lawful Islamism, the intent to curtail language or behavior is never constrained to just one terrain or issue; they will always eye the next opportunity to regulate free will.

That language constriction is again being entertained by leaders, is another demonstration that the often good intentions those would like to think they champion Muslim interests. In actuality, they tend to not know much about the faith or its followers and thus are misguided toward policies that are damaging to freedom of religion.

Here’s how…

From the birth of Islam’s presence on the world stage, through today, Islam has always been progressing, regressing, shaping and evolving to suit the needs of the community. We see it in the way Islam waxed and waned during Prophet Muhammad’s time, starting out as peaceful and later emerging as a more warring religion when early Muslims were at risk of annihilation. We saw it in the first hundred years after the prophet’s death, as Muslims tried to flesh out the faith, as the faith adapted to local regions and branched into niche interpretations of Islam. And of course, there has been a consistent involvement of scholars (now imams and celebrity community activists) who try to shape Islam based on reasoning or propaganda depending on the character of the individual. For better or worse, Islam is not a static faith. It is better understood if it’s seen as an organism, or an evolving consciousness.

With that understanding, the right of Muslims to speak freely about our faith should have protection under civil rights. An attempt to regulate speech within or outside the government or private sector is nothing short of a violation of freedom of religion.

For more on Islamism, listen to my conversation with Liam Duffy. Duffy is a UK-based preventing violent extremism who also weighed in against eradicating the term “Islamist terrorism.” In a one-hour conversation, we discuss:

• How abuse against Muslim Reformers gave Liam the courage to speak openly against the ideology of violent jihad

• The fetishizing of minority communities is an obstacle to overcoming some of the issues revolving around Islamism and jihadism

• How are people who’ve grown up in in democratic ideals adopting an 8th century ideology?

• The romanticization of 9/11 by Islamists

• Beyond identity politics: A look at what bonds people in a secular state

• How to counter public denial and naivety about Islamist extremism?

• Is it possible to fight for PVE without fighting Islamism?

• The problem with pigeon-holing radicalization as a vulnerability problem

• Managing expectations in deradicalization

• Tell the better story: Storytelling as a response to the ideological challenge of Islamism and other challenges posed by Islamist groups to liberal democracy. Counter narratives and counter messaging