Thursday, July 5, 2007

If 'Islamist' is out, what do we call them?

"If it were proved that highly qualified, ambitious doctors were Islamist mass-murder plotters, it would put a hole through another comforting theory - that this is "all about" under-employed young men of low self-esteem and educational attainments.

[...]


On Start the Week on Monday, all the distinguished guests, including the philosopher John Gray and the historian Eric Hobsbawm, vehemently agreed that the word "Islamist", which I have used at the top of this column, was wrong and dangerous. It implied a strong lin
k to Islam, which was unfair. I thought the distinction between "Islamic" and "Islamist" was enough: but if we need a new and more accurate word for extremist Muslims, what is it?"

Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph, 04/07/2007
More:
Terror-spooked EU: 'Don't say Muslims'
Gordon Brown's ban on the word "Muslim" in relation to terrorism can be blamed on the EU
. The prime minister has told Cabinet members not to mention "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath. It comes after the European Commission issued a guide for government spokesmen to avoid offence by ruling out the words such as "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist" in statements about terrorist attacks.

Daily Mail, 4th July 2007
But being a reasonable fellow, I decided to look up "muslim" at Thesaurus.com to see the alternatives:

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