On 5/23/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
On May 23, 2006, at 12:51 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
What is an "Islamist" exactly?
Wikipedia has an excellent article on this. I'm using the term to denote fundamentalists who support things like terrorism and destroying the Jews.
That seems like a very narrow meaning for this word.
It is pretty narrow. In general discourse, "Islamist" refers to a rather sophisticated political ideology. But I'm using the term provisionally.
-- Philip L. Welch
Mm. I disagree. The majority of usages of "Islamist" I see out in the mainstream media and by actual people seem to boil down "a Muslim terrorist who hates America, its allies, and its ideals", and only rarely and generally in sophisticated, if not downright academic, discourse, does it refer to the ideology descended in large part from Salafi thinkers and others such as Sayyid Qutb.
~maru